Lucky Day in Hell
by L0C
Summary: How Beka met Harper. Winner of the 'Best Harper Backstory. Ever.' Award. Newly reformatted!
1. Act One

**Lucky Day in Hell**

Act One

Mama gripped onto the milkman's hand  
And then she finally gave birth  
Years go by, still I don't know  
Who shall inherit this earth  
And no one will know my name  
Until it's on the stone, whoa...  
This could be your lucky day in hell  
-Eels "Your Lucky Day in Hell"

**Scene One**

Dead asleep.

Dead asleep, past twisting and turning, past the sense of any peripheral stimulus, so deep in his subconscious that if it weren't for rapid movement in his dream-self eyes, one would have thought he was another pale, lifeless corpse of a workhouse child.

Dead asleep, and in his shuttered eyes he could still see the blood dripping down his mother's back as she was murdered, he could see the flutter of insect wings as they gathered to feast on his father's corpse, the pornographically swollen bellies of the starving infants as they sat wailing between the bodies of their parents.

It was a distressing sight to see over and over, so Seamus Harper left the world of the dead in favour of the world of the dying. He woke up.

He woke up in the corner of the subway alcove that was his new home, in the exact same position that he had fallen asleep. He was barefoot, his head shorn and scabby, a perpetual fly twittering around his eyes- the infomercial glamour of the third world.

Seamus rubbed at his sunken eyes and then stared into the ensuing darkness until sight returned.

He pulled the old moth-eaten blue hoodie from under him and fumbled with it, the sound of ancient cotton on cotton was deafening in the silence. He finally got it over his wire frame before he wandered in the stuffy twilight towards Joy's cradle.

The cradle was pitiful, really, but Seamus had built it himself in the weeks past, some busy work with old pieces of scrap metal and clothing stolen from the graveyard. Brendan had set him to it after Seamus showed up on his 'doorstep' alone, really alone, and for the first time in his short life, frowning.

Seamus hadn't intended on staying in the alcove this long, of course, he knew he was in danger, and that he was a danger to Brendan, baby Joy, and all of Brendan's friends who lived here.

He just...wasn't ready.

Joy gurgled up at him and his hollow face allowed for a sickly smile. She didn't smile back, her big blue eyes staring up at him in frightening alertness. It was a look that she most have gotten from her father, who had left her mother and Brendan when Joy was still a scant possibility. That day was the first time Seamus ever saw Brendan get drunk. After that, Brendan had to start working to take care of his sister Joy, and his mother, who used to be a brothel girl. She never had this curious alertness, she never took anything in- she always had a glassy redness in her eyes, and seemed as though she didn't remember her own children.

"How goes it, kiddo?" He leaned down and kissed her gently. She continued to stare. "You're hungry, aren't you?" He asked a little sadly. Joy never cried. She never did anything.

Seamus picked Joy up and gathered his hoodie around her in his arms. It was still early. His day wasn't completely wasted. Then again, time on Earth was sort of relative- day was separated by night by the colour of the light- either a sickening fast-food yellow at night from the ambience and the fires or a depressing grey from the sunlight fighting through the fallout. Those un/fortunate enough to have work in the arms factories and labs had something like twenty hour work days, usually separated by bouts of drinking or ceilidhs or falling down from exhaustion and waking up someplace else. To say nothing of the workers in the mines or the sweatshops- most of the latter were chained for life, most of the former were pulled off the streets for having the ability to walk. Many arms workers would get out of the factory, wallow in a second of freedom, and then be pulled for mine duty.

It was a long walk out of the subway tunnels, past many other oil can fires and alcove shanties. The arms factory where Brendan and Carol worked wasn't that far, though, and Seamus pulled up his hoodie over his face as he reached the surface.

He had to stand outside the back entrance for a while before he was able to get in. It was heavily guarded from unknown kludges like himself, but Brendan had told him to come whenever they ran out of food for Joy. Carol had just lost her newborn and was still feeding, and had taken care of Joy like her own child.

Brendan and Carol came to meet him in a small backroom that the workers used to stow their meager rucksacks and belongings, the few that had any. Carol nursed Joy quietly in one corner while Seamus huddled in another, his hood pulled up around his head.

When Carol was twelve she had stumbled upon a small group of Nietzschean workmasters in a plan to expand on a biological lab, with procedures that would endanger all the workers there. While Carol at the time could not have possibly understood the implications, they still stitched her lips shut with a thin cable so she wouldn't speak a word of it. And she never did.

There was leeway enough for her to smile, though Seamus sometimes got the impression that smiling was painful for her, and she ate by taking a small, mushy portion on a finger to one of the gaps and sucking it through that way.

She didn't eat any worse than the rest of them. It just lasted a little longer.

"You cold, Shay?" Brendan asked casually, wondering, not for the first time, why Seamus kept himself hidden away in plain sight.

"No, no, I'm fine. I, um...I'm going to work on the well. I'll see you 'round later, 'kay?"

"Take care of yourself," Brendan said a little softly as Seamus slithered out, avoiding their employers.

Seamus had taught himself to read when he was about eight, thus ruining him for any practical work the Nietszcheans might have wanted. Eventually he came across maths and sciences and, in his own mind, was elevated from the world of manual labour and into one of the academics, the guys who sat around smoking pipes and discussing philosophy. The idea of sitting around smoking pipes and discussing philosophy was never particularily appealling to him, it was still far better than the previous alternative. He would stay up late, when they still lived in the refugee camp outside of the old city, and stared up at what passed for stars, dreaming up a life of wealth and simple comforts beyond his grasp. One night, a night like any other, he decided that he would make those dreams come true, a decision that others in his situation might deem arrogant.

He started teaching himself more and more, feeding his curiosity at every step, often getting himself injured along the way. He built makeshift computers for the refugees, devices to help diagnose the sickly, until he built himself up a little bit of a reputation.

And for one in his life station, reputations are never good to have.

After his parents were murdered, and after he lay low until he assumed that they assumed he was dead, he came out from the shadows and started picking up the pieces of his dream again. His hope hadn't died, his spirit, his ambition- if anything, the death of his parents added fuel to the fire. He had only started with Joy's cradle, when he was still in shock, then went on to tinker with shelters, and old vehicles. He would only give his name as Seamus, as the Nietzscheans would remember the name of the family they had slaughtered so deliberately. At least, one would hope they did. Other times he used the name Zelazny, to throw other people off, until he got so confused as to what lie he was telling whom that he stopped answering to any name, unless it was Brendan or another of his friends.

His most recent project involved digging and building a well for the town, near the shanties where Ubers only frequented if they really wanted something. Seamus was hoping to hit clean groundwater, but he wasn't stupid in his hopes. An easily accessible supply of water would be a godsend either way, diseased or not.

Seamus had figured it out on paper, or in his head anyway, but he wasn't sure on the depth. He had spent the last two days digging, which was a feat that he had sorely underestimated. He was still only halfway to his calculated depth, and he stood staring at the hole in the ground for a little while before he started digging, getting a little discouraged. Then he shrugged it off, and said to himself /there's plenty of time to be discouraged when I'm dead/ and he started digging.

He had been digging for about an hour when he took his hoodie off, his emaciated little fifteen-year-old body covered in a sheen of sweat when a Nietzschean came up silently behind him, with all the cold calculation of a cat stalking it's prey.

"Kludge, what are you doing?" Seamus honestly jumped. The Nietzschean stood behind him, towering formidably, and glowering like looks could kill. God knows what he was doing there.

"Um, I..." Seamus thought quickly. "I'm digging a grave for my brother, sir. He died this morning."

The Uber didn't go away. He stood there, staring at Seamus' face for an inappropriately long time.

"You look familiar, boy. Did you ever live in the refugee camp in Cambridge?"

"No...Sir. Inner Boston, born and bred." He risked a disarming smile and tried to look as stupid as possible.

"What is your name?"

"Shay." Seamus looked away, back down at his hole.

"Can you read?"

"No."

The Nietszchean actually reached out and took Seamus' chin, which caused the boy to twitch a little, and studied him more carefully.

"We're looking for a kludge about your age who calls himself Harper. He can read and write, and is a complete troublemaker."

Seamus gripped his flimsy shovel towards himself a little more tightly. "I'll tell someone if I hear about him," He said softly.

"See that you do," The Uber fixed him with one more withering glare, and then disappeared down the streets to make someone else's life hell.

Seamus could only stared after him. /Oh, shit/ he thought. /I'm screwed, I'm screwed, I'm screwed./

**Scene Two**

Greasy, she felt greasy. Her hair was stringy and...gross and there was always this thin grimy sheen of pollution and grease on her face. Beka tried to hide her discomfort as she leaned against the hatchway to the Maru, waiting for Bobby to return.

The worst part was the flies. It was too cold up in space for many of the bacterium and...amoebas that existed on planets. Insects had always been her biggest problem with planets, but here...God in Heaven, it was like a frelling petri dish. Spiders the size of her hands skittered across her feet, her arms were already scarred up with bites, and she was starting to think she was developing a phobia about bugs in her hair.

She scratched at her neck, where the dust and grease and bites accumulated, and wished a thousand deaths upon Bobby for leaving for so long. Bobby had warned her, in the condescending sort of tone that he had started to get lately, to stay with the ship lest 'hellians' come and bash it in or steal parts. She wanted to tell him that she knew how to protect her own home thank you very much, but she believed him so she did what he said.

The very least this miserable planet could do for her was rain. Back in the deep, cold womb-hold of Mother Universe you wouldn't need to shower for days. Nothing grows, nothing multiplies, everything has the same brisk regulated metal-smell of sanitation and cleanliness. Even the Maru, while not exactly a luxury liner, was always clean. Here she felt like she could scrub for years and still be dirty.

"What the hell took you so long?" She demanded when Bobby finally returned, rubbing his eyes, looking as bad as she felt.

"Beka..."

"I've been waiting here for hours! You know I hate being dirtside!"

"Jesus, Beka, if you'd just-"

"It would really kill you to show me an ounce of respect, wouldn't it?"

"Beka, shut up!" She crossed her arms. Bobby rubbed the bridge of his nose, his hands shaking. "Don't talk so loudly. Someone might..." he trailed off. "Do you know how hard it is to get information out of the people who live here?"

"Well, where are we supposed to go?" She leaned back against the hatchway and tried not to scratch.

"It's supposed to be hidden in the arms factory, wherever that is. Nothing's posted. And no one here can read." The disgust was evident on his face; Bobby wasn't exactly the most compassionate person around. "It is in the possession of a certain Nietzschean, Kago Goyashu. He's a henchman to the owner of the arms factory. Wherever the hell that is!" He kicked at the Maru.

"Stop that!" She bit back "you asshole". "So we find some kids to go in there and get it. Not so hard, if they work in the factory he probably won't even notice."

"Yeah. Yeah," He rubbed his face again. "That sounds like a plan, go do that," He started wobbling up the hatchway.

"What?" Beka was indignant. "We were supposed to be a partnership in this, Bobby."

"Well I just spent the last two hours out there trying to find where this stupid thing is!" He responded as defensively as she had. "I need to lie down or...something, please Beka?" He leaned over on the railing and ruffled his eyebrows at her.

"Fine," She sighed haughtily. Anything if it meant her getting off this dirtball faster.

-

He had gotten past the layer of earth that was mostly eroded sand and was at the real hard clay digging now. Seamus still shook slightly from his previous encounter with Big Ugly, in addition to his malnutrition that made hard labour all but impossible. All but sweatshop-workcamp-breathe-and-die-labour.

"Hey, kid," Someone said behind him. He stopped for a second, less than a second, a curious hesitance that would be barely noticeable by anybody else, a tiny little admittance of fear. He went back to digging, hoping she was talking to someone else, pretending to be deaf and/or stupid.

She waited a moment before kicking some dirt up at him. "Hey!"

Seamus turned around, still scared, a little angry now. "Wha-" He stopped. God, she was gorgeous. Ripped-out-of-the-pages-of-some-ancient-space-bound-magazine gorgeous. Tall, redheaded, tough, beautiful, and you couldn't even see her bones!

Seamus stared. And she stared right back.

Blue eyes.

Smouldering blue eyes.

Black leather.

Wow.

"Ye...yeah?" He answered, intelligently enough.

"You think I could get some help?"

"S...sure!" Seamus stepped forward a little too quickly, his previous fears forgotten, his hormones getting in the way. Hell, his fifteen-year-old hormones were all that was keeping his emaciated little body standing up.

The woman crossed her arms in front of her not-hugely-endowed-but-better-than-Earther chest. "I'm looking for a Nietzschean named Kago Goyashu."

"Never heard of him." He cringed. "Sorry,"

She sighed, and Seamus noticed something familiar in the look of her eyes. It was the look of a woman who was sick of searching for something better, and had resigned herself to whatever she had. Seamus had seen that look a lot. It was disconcerting to see it on One Who Has Everything, but he quickly forgot about it.

"He operates the arms factory. Does that help?"

Seamus' eyes really widened, but he quickly covered that up, too. "I know a lot of people who work at the arms factory. They're there all the time, they'd know."

"Wanna help me get hooked up with them?"

Okay, beauty aside, it was time to be suspicious. Seamus narrowed an eye at her.

"There's a...thousand thrones in it if you do it for me."

He stopped narrowing his eye, but he didn't answer right away. A thousand was a lot. It would help him get a start to leaving this godforsaken rock, anyway.

But he was still distrustful.

She sighed again. "And a meal."

A thousand thrones was a thousand thrones, but a meal was a meal! "Okay," He said, cheerfully enough.

- They were sitting on the ground in an alley in the old, crumbled downtown. She had gone to the spaceport and bought food from the vendors, there exclusively for the Nietzschean overlords and 'visitors' like herself. Seamus had hung back in the old dirty shanty city while she was gone, thinking to himself /I'm gonna eat today/.

She stared at him like she had never seen someone eat in her life. Seamus stopped his constant running routine of hand to mouth and looked up at her, suspiciously.

"Don't make yourself sick, kid," Valentine, as she had introduced herself as, said.

"Don't you worry about me," he retorted. He stopped whatever he was going to say next and just stared at her, a little afraid that she would drop the deal.

Apparently, she was beyond caring. She suddenly wiped her hands all over her arms and legs, like she was trying to get something off of her. "Who are these people who work in the arms factory?" Her voice was a little disgusted, but Seamus deduced that it wasn't in the same context.

He had started eating again and spoke around a busy mouth. "My cousin Brendan, and some friends and Brendan's mom. But...she doesn't really count."

"When can I meet these people?"

Seamus hesitated, suddenly wondering if this was such a good idea. Brendan was idealistic to being moronic, and Seamus had a sinking feeling that no matter how much he explained that it would be beneficial to the humans of Earth, he might not do it. He still had this silly notion that revolution could be peaceful, that the salvation of the enslaved billions lay in peaceful negotiations with the Nietzscheans, not in blowing lots of shit up and running away.

"Every single revolution in the history of humanity has been bloody," Ozzie had once said, trying to reason with Brendan.

"Oh yeah, and look what a fine situation that landed us in!" Seamus' cousin and new guardian had retorted.

He swallowed the last of his sandwich and looked up at her again. "You can...meet them tonight. In the subway tunnels. I'll talk to them and then I'll come and get you. On your ship, right? In the sand flats?"

"Yeah..." She regarded him a moment. "I can trust you, right? You're not seeing any of the money until this is all done. And if you betray me, or any of these people you mentioned, I will have to hurt you. Okay?"

Seamus hesitated again. The big, skittery, survivalist part of him positively screamed that it was too dangerous. Every single Neitszchean in the Boston area was on orders to look for him, Seamus Zelazny Harper, and he couldn't get caught mixed up in something like this, whatever this was... but it wouldn't be him. He didn't know anything about the arms factory. It would be his cousin...oh, god, Brendan. How could he put Brendan in that danger?

But Seamus was still in the childish, hero-worship phase that made him believe Brendan could put the sun out with his bare hands. If he wanted. Brendan would probably say that was interfering with the natural structure of the galaxy.

And, dammit, a thousand thrones was a thousand thrones! And he wanted off this rock so badly.

"Okay!" He said. "For a thousand thrones, Jesus, you'd better believe you can trust me!"

She looked at him a little sadly. "Okay. You know where to find me." She didn't cast him another glance as she walked off.

Seamus was a little nervous, but the feeling was soon replaced by more hunger. Feasts for armies wouldn't be enough food.

He forced himself to feel a little happy. He would be okay. He was going to get a lot of money. He could buy some decent clothes, get an identity forged...and get the hell off of Earth.

He was leaving.

He was.

-

It made her sick to her stomach, sitting there watching him eat. It was the single most harrowing, perverse thing she had ever done. Sit there and watch a starving kid eat what was probably the biggest meal in his life while she talked him into being used.

God.

The worst part was the insects. Beka had spent the entire time, when she wasn't shooing other bugs away from her, watching a fly that seemed to live by a small cut near Seamus' right eye. It was actually landed on his face and Seamus didn't seem to notice. It wandered around there, at one point settling right by the point where his upper and lower lips met. Seamus moistened his lips and his tongue actually touched the fly! And he didn't even notice!

Beka was almost sick all over herself right then and there.

/It's okay, you'll survive/ she whispered in her head over and over. Only a few days. Find these kids, throw some money at them, watch shit blow up, and get off Earth forever. Deliver the discs to her employer, grow fat off the profits, and live the rest of her live with Bobby on a nice, affluent, clean spaceship, taking as many jumps to nowhere as she wanted.

Beka Valentine, once she got past the disgust and immediate culture shock, couldn't wait.

**Scene Three**

The arms factory was deafening, not the gentle silence of the empty subway tunnels that made one think one had gone deaf, rather the opposite. Loud, clanging metal nonstop, clunking, banging, machinery creaking with the scream of efficiency. It was hot and stuffy and dangerous, and Brendan had the honour of stuffing bullets full of death powder, his fingers burnt and grated and covered in bandages. He had Joy strapped to his back where she napped, oblivious to the noise and clamour around her. Brendan was beginning to think Joy actually had gone deaf from spending the first few weeks of her life in an arms factory, but he pushed the thought as far back as he could for sanity's sake.

Carol worked across from him, checking his work. Not really checking anymore, after sixteen hours of work with only a stolen break to nurse a baby, she was just going through the actions. Much like himself. His stomach rumbled and he paused for a moment, closing his eyes and wishing he could sleep. Only four more hours 'til his daily pay- a quarter of a guilder and a bowl of black lentils. He only ate that once a day, and spent the rest taking care of Joy and Seamus. Joy hardly cost anything, and Seamus was stubborn enough to usually find his own way- usually through theft. His mother kept mostly to herself. So the little makeshift family lived better on their meagre collection of quarters than most others.

Brendan counted himself lucky, though a small part of him knew it was still slave labour.

He worried about Seamus. The kid was acting weird, beyond the weird of grieving for his parents. He had stabilized mostly after that, gotten on with his life for the most part. The last week he had taken to covering himself up, and not talking nearly as much as he did. Usually Brendan couldn't get him to shut up. As much as it pained Brendan to say it, Seamus worried him.

Brendan smiled faintly as he remembered the day twelve-year-old Seamus found a 'book of poetry' in the dump- _Have you been to the desert have you walked with the dead/ There's a hundred thousand children being killed for their bread _. He had gone around for a week talking in rhyme, usually something grim and dark and not nearly as clever.

Thank God that was over.

He felt something tugging on the rags of his 'trousers' and looked under the worktable to find a hesitant Seamus.

"What are you doing here?" He whispered- well, yelled quietly- over the din of the arms factory. "You can't risk sneaking in twice in one day."

"I need to talk to you," Seamus yelled back.

"It can't wait?"

"No, there'd be no time!" Seamus looked around cautiously and poked his hooded head out from under the work counter. "Are you going right to the ceilidh after work?"

"Yes," Like there was time to do anything else. Right after his meal he was going to get as drunk as possible as quickly as possible.

Something exploded farther down the line. Seamus disappeared back under the workcounter, skittishly. Brendan scrunched his eyes shut, shielding his face against the blast. When it had died down, and all that was left was the crying of the victims and the yelling of the their angry Nietzschean overlords, he carefully slung Joy from his back and cradled her.

She wasn't hurt, but she had felt the blast and she was crying. Her plastic-doll face was covered in soot, and tears streamed through it, her little balled up fists flailing at the air. Joy didn't make a sound, though, her cries coming through as strained gurgles and hiccups.

"Jesus," Brendan said softly, cradling his sister to him. He hazarded a look at Carol, who had not reacted as physically as the others, her stitched up face covered in the same soot and grime, staring woefully at the now smouldering explosion and the bodies being carried out.

"Brendan!" Seamus hissed again from under the workcounter. Brendan just kicked him because Uber guards were walking past again, occasionally stopping to threaten a slave worker.

"Get back to work, kludge!" One of them pushed Brendan sharply in the back, and he landed with his elbows on the worktable, just barely dropping baby Joy. Suppressing a burst of anger, refusing to stoop as low as his oppressors, he hazarded a small comforting smile at Carol and slipped under the workcounter, holding his sister close.

Seamus had pulled his hood up even further over his head, completely hiding his face. It was hot in the arms factory, the sort of stuffy, sweaty unbearable-ness that went with filling bullets all day. Brendan raised an eyebrow at his impressionable little cousin and asked him, again, what he wanted.

Seamus looked up at him from his hood shyly. "Is it okay if I bring a friend to the ceilidh?"

"Who?"

"Well...I met this girl."

"Oh my God, Shay..." Brendan couldn't count all the failed relationships his cousin had had with the girls around here, and the seriousness that Seamus attributed to them was nothing if not unhealthy.

"No, it's different, Brendan." He leaned in, with a childish whisper: "She's a spacer!"

"Jesus Christ, Shay, you do know you're out of your league, right?"

"Shut up, I don't mean it like that!" Seamus smiled, a little nervously, Brendan noticed. "She wants to hire us,"

Brendan's face immediately turned stony, and Seamus leaned back a bit. "For what?" He said sharply.

"I..." Brendan could see the colour drain from Seamus' already chalky face. Poor kid still had his head up in the clouds. Jesus, if Brendan could get him on a spaceship off of Earth, he would in an instant, but...Seamus had to learn sometime that he was stuck here like the rest of them, and to make the most of that. "It's...she needs to find a Niet, Kabo..Goy...something. She said he operated the arms factory."

Brendan knew him. He was a big asshole up in petro-chem who took a particular pleasure in terrorizing children, particularily children who didn't even work in his factory. Brendan didn't say anything, though, and he didn't let his face betray his reaction, either. "And?"

"And..well...I don't know. She wants to buy something or steal something I guess. Maybe kill him?"

"Or, she might want to strike up a deal with him that involved buying a bunch of us kludges for petro-chem experiments," Brendan's voice has a sharper edge than he had meant to put into it. Seamus's face fell.

"But..." Seamus closed his eyes for a minute. "She's going to give me a thousand thrones just for getting you to meet her. Imagine what she'd pay just for you to tell here where this guy is!"

Brendan still didn't answer.

"Plus, she's a spacer, she could-"

"Don't even think that, Shay!" Brendan was really worried now. "I...don't go around making up daydreams about every alien spacer who lands here. Unless the High Guard came back one day, they're not here to save us," His cousin's face fell again, and Brendan regretted having to say that.

"But I wa..." Seamus trailed off, looking almost as lost and forlorn as the day he'd shown up at Brendan's, half naked, shaking, and covered in his parents' blood. "At least meet her," he recovered, a little angrily. "Please, Brendan? I'll get her and take her to the ceilidh, it's not like we'll be outnumbered. You can decide for yourself. If you say no, I'll drop it forever." He did his best to look sincere.

Brendan sighed, gently rubbing Joy's now still back, where she had managed to fall asleep on his chest. "Fine," he muttered. "But don't you be getting your hopes up." He suppressed a smile when Seamus leaned forward and hugged him fiercely, trying to avoid Joy.

-

Anything was better than this.

Beka sat in the silent cockpit, her feet up on the console, her newly-cleaned hair braided behind her head. She felt, possibly, worse than she ever had before. What, exactly, had gone wrong?

She remembered when she had first met Bobby, on a supply run for a safe, legit office company from one drift to another. There was a party in some hole in the wall somewhere, they were both tripped out, had a fling, it was fun. He started tagging along on runs, occasionally finding them jobs, that was fun, too. She started, maybe, seeing things in him that weren't there. He would say something that normally she would find infuriating but she chose to delete it from memory for the sake of staying with him. It got to a point where she couldn't remember a time without him.

They started picking up weird, freaky runs that reminded her a little too much of her childhood. It became dangerous. They'd be an hour late on a jump and Bobby would freak out at her.

She had gotten back to the Maru today after talking to that poor kid, to find Bobby reading through the flexis of her journal.

"What the hell are you doing?" She had yelled, and he had looked up at her with paranoid, rapid eyes. And they fought.

Fought like they always fought now- yelling, curse words that they themselves found particularly offensive, they throw stuff, he hit her, she hit back, and they cried.

Eventually Bobby crashed out in the mess hall and Beka stormed off, hiding her weepy eyes, to brood. She wanted him to stop. But she didn't know how to tell him.

Beka should have known when they took this mission, it was different than the others. There was something off about it. That their employer wanted to obtain weapons spec from an enemy, that wasn't new. That their employer was Nietzschean, that turned Beka off somewhat. That the mission required their going to Earth, that turned her off completely.

So she and Bobby had fought about that, too, and in the end he had his way, like he always did. Like all her men always did. And here she was too afriad of loosing him to force him to drop this one mission, just this one.

And here she was.

There was a light smattering of dirt and stones on the side of the ship. She looked up from her brooding, alert, suspicious. It came again.

"What the hell," She said, grabbing a loose pipe and walking to open the hatchway.

Seamus stood there, his hood pulled up, handfuls of rocks and gravel, grinning like an idiot.

"Jesus, it's you," Beka said ruefully.

"It's your lucky day!" Seamus called, obviously pleased with himself.

"Yeah, a lucky day in hell," She looked around. "Where's your friend?"

Seamus blinked. "Well, not here. I'm bringing you to meet him."

Beka sighed. She really wasn't up to the prospect of seeing more of Earth.

"You didn't think I was going to bring him out here alone, did you?" Seamus smiled. "Come on. We're going to a party."

Beka didn't respond. A party...didn't sound so bad.

"You better not be screwing with me, kid." She warned.

"I'm not!" Seamus' face fell again. "Really, boss, you can trust me. Come on. They're waiting."

Beka regarded Seamus' face, and he smiled again. Maybe she could trust him.

"...do you want me to bring something to drink?"

**Scene Four**

It was different at night, the streets lit up in glow from the oilcan fires and the old streetlights and ambience falling down on them from the smoggy sky. They walked along in companionable silence, their only soundtrack the comfortable scrape of her shoes and his feet on ground up gravel.

Seamus looked up at her, sideways, as they walked, and thought again about how pretty she was. Her fine red hair framed her sharp, angular face just so, bringing out the tough blue in her eyes.

What Seamus noticed most about her was her skin, the same sort of soulless pale tone that he had, but...softer, moister, unworked. He was willing to bet her back was unscarred (and willing to find out). He looked down at his own calloused, grimy, bandaged hands and winced. Brendan was right. He was out of his league.

How could kid from the slums of old Mother Earth be anything more than a tool to One Who Has Everything? He tucked his hands into the ragged sleeves of his hoodie and looked up at her again, for some sign that she was human just like him, the glimmer of sadness that he had seen in her eyes earlier, but nothing was forthcoming. If he squinted a bit, though, he could see the tiniest bruise under her right eye.

"Where'd you get th-" His swollen, bare feet tripped over loose gravel and he fell, headfirst, which was not uncommon for him, but was something he had forgotten about since meeting Valentine.

She actually had the gall to laugh. But then she added "Are you okay?" So it wasn't all bad.

"Yeah..." he replied slowly. He wasn't, really, but damned if he was going to let her know that. He was beginning to see why his fellow Earthers didn't hold They Who Have Everything in the highest regard.

Valentine drew back a bit; Seamus looked down on himself and realized he had cut open his right foot somewhat. Not a huge hole, it'd heal in time, it wasn't even bleeding that badly. He shrugged and wiped it with his hoodie, and continued to limp in the dirt.

Valentine shuddered, and Seamus pretended he didn't see it.

"I was looking at your bruise," He explained, waving a hand vaguely in the direction of her face. Her expression changed, apparent now that the joke was on her, and she touched it softly.

"It's nothing," She said quickly. "I fell. Happens all the time,"

"Not used to terrain like this?"

"No. I grew up in space. Lived all my life in artificial environments," Seamus hid his distate when she said that. They continued on, asking each other awkward questions, like a fish and a bird forced together to make friends.

A sign hidden in darkness on the side of one of the crumbling buildings caught Seamus' attention and he held back a bit, reading quickly.

_Wanted for High Level Labour  
'Harper'- mid-teens, male  
White, blonde, blue eyes, 5'4"  
He can read and write and has been known to cause trouble in the Cambridge labour camps  
Be on guard for shrillers_

It was a memo, from the big Alpha Ubers to the lowly beta ones that oversaw the kludges. Seamus felt his small, empty stomach turn as he read it. He didn't want to know what High Level Labour meant.

"Seamus?" He managed to rip the notice down before she fully turned around.

"Huh?"

"You all right?" What a sight, was Valentine, illuminated by the harsh backlighting of fire and electricity, her leather-clad body twist to face him, a wine bottle in both hands.

Mmm. Wine and Valentine. Even if the whole thing did fall through, it would still be a good ceilidh.

"I'm okay," He snapped out of his tangential train of thought. "I was just...fixing my foot a bit." He wiped the accumulated dirt and blood off his cut foot with the notice for added effect.

Then when she wasn't looking he ripped it up into as many little pieces as he could.

No way was he letting his sweatshop-grey past ruin his sparkling-wine future.

-

It was the most interesting party Beka Valentine had ever attended. The subway tunnels were dark, eerie, echoing with shouts and riffs from old fiddles. Everyone in the tunnels, creepy-looking mutant-type squeegee kids, mostly, gave her strange and suspicious looks as she walked past. All was put to rest, however, after Seamus would smile and wave cheerfully and say "This is Valentine! She's a spacer!" Some of the smaller children actually started to like her after they learned she had bought Seamus "A whole freakin' sandwich!"

Seamus introduced her to Brendan, his cousin, where he sat at an old upturned barrel cradling a creepy-looking, emaciated little baby.

Beka leaned forward a little. "Hi," she said softly. "I'm Captain Valentine," And up from the darkness came the two most beautiful blue eyes she had ever seen.

"I'm Brendan Leahy," He said, in a voice that made her want to melt. "Seamus tells me..." he trailed off. "Seamus, go help Cailean with the kids,"

"What? But I-"

"Go!" Brendan said in a tone that meant no arguments. He then broke it with a smile. "I have to talk to the captain. Remember your promise, Shay?"

Seamus pouted like teenagers everywhere. "Yeah, yeah," He wandered off into the crowd.

"So," Brendan said. "Seamus tells me you want to find someone at the arms factory."

"Yeah."

"Sit." He slid over on his bench, leaving enough room for her to sit that the sides of their bodies pressed right up against each other. "He mentioned Kago. Kago Goyashu, is that who you're looking for?"

"Yes. Do you know of him?"

Brendan looked at Beka and she looked back and she almost forgot to listen to him. "How much are you willing to spend?" He asked with all the naked hunger of They Who Have Nothing.

Beka blinked. "A thousand thrones if you can tell me what I want to know. More if you're willing to organize a team to help me get past him."

Brendan cocked his head a moment, and for a second Beka thought he was checking her out. Not that she was complaining.

"So you do have a lot of money to throw around." What the hell was that supposed to mean? "Where's Shay's thousand for bringing you to me?"

These people really were desperate. Not like they could actually take a thousand thrones to the spaceport and expect to get service. She dug a couple of several-hundred credit chips out of her pockets and lay them on the barrell. "There. You can pass those along."

Brendan's beautiful blue eyes actually widened as he stared at the money. He looked back up at her again, speechless.

"And this is for you," She showed him another thousand. "If you can tell me where Kago Goyashu is and if there's a way to get into his stuff."

"Kago Goyashu is an overseer of petro-chem in the arms lab." He said without hesitation, the same naked raw need showing in his eyes that haunted those of everyone around him.

"Petro-chem. Nuclear weapons," Beka muttered, the entire mission becoming a little clearer to her now. She saw the puzzled look on his face and realized that 'petro-chem' and 'nuclear' were both just words to him. "Do you work in petro-chem?"

"No. But I could in there easily enough. One kludge is just like another to them." He drew back a bit now. "But I told you what you wanted to know. We haven't said anything about my working for you."

Beka sighed again, a little louder, and almost threw the credit chips at him. "Okay. Seamus tells me that I can trust you and your friends, and if I can, there's a lot of money in it for you."

"I'm not agreeing to anything if it puts anyone in danger, especially Shay," Brendan said forcefully. Beka felt a shiver go up her spine.

Then she realized where she was and felt like she was taking advantage of him. And that made her sick.

"It's not...I just need to obtain something of his. Some information he has, some discs. We just...first need to find out where they're hidden, and then a way to get in. Look, I may not even need you guys to help with any of the lifting, I just need some spywork."

Brendan thought for a moment. "I'll talk to Ozzie. He can read, so he's in Kago's office a lot. But I can't promise anything."

Beka smiled. "It's a start," She cracked open one of the wine bottles. "Shall we toast to it?"

Brendan smiled back, and her heart fluttered a bit, and they drank.

And drank. And after the wine ran out someone gave her homemade whisky (uisgi-beatha as they called it in Gaelic, the water of life). It burned a hole right down her throat and made her vision fuzz and blur like the best memories she'd ever had. Seamus took the opportunity to dance with her, and she managed to get past the dirt and grime and blood and insects and have a good time. Even if she was thinking of dancing with Brendan the whole time.

Eventually, as the night wore on, and Beka had had more than her fair share of drinks (which many there would say was appropriate for One Who Has Everything), she sat collapsed on the bench next to Brendan again. A young woman woman, younger than Beka, came over and took Brendan's baby from him, and went off to another bench.

"Do you like my cousin Seamus?" Brendan suddenly asked, out of the blue.

"Yeah. Yeah, he's shchweet," She was a little drunk.

"He's attractive?"

"Oh, yeah, he's definitely a cute kid." Beka hit her knees a little hard there. Definitely more than a little drunk.

"You would marry him?"

That sobered her up. "What?"

"You're a lot like him. You would make a good pair," Brendan was staring at some point by her feet now, looking much older than his years, like a father making bad deals for the sake of his children.

"I..." Her eyes fell upon the young woman who was nursing the baby, who was walking back to them. Her lips were stitched together. Oh, God, her lips were stitched together. And that creepy little emaciated baby was sucking at her tiny, wrinkled breasts like- just stop that train of thought!

"You are rich," Brendan muttered, still staring at her feet.

"No. I'm not. I'm really not."

"Do you have IT?" He asked, innocently enough, referring to the nanobots that kept her healthy and, wastefully enough, kept her hair a nice shade of red.

"Yees..." She answered hesitantly.

His face broke into a smile. "Then you're richer than us!" He leaned over her, himself a little drunk. "Look at her. That's my sister, Joy," The baby was now bouncing on the stitched up woman's lap. "Isn't she cute?"

No! "Yeah,"

"Go on. Pick her up." Brendan coaxed. "She'll be your cousin one day, too,"

Beka froze, if only for a moment, because she didn't want to pick the creepy baby up. She didn't want to because there was nothing more horrific than the family of parasites that made the baby their home, nothing more perverted than the emaciated bare breasts of a woman unable to speak, nothing more pornographically scarring than the bony limbs and glassy eyes of a child that doesn't cry. Beka wanted to be sick, she wanted to run away and cry over her shoulder "I'm sorry! I can't help you! I'm poor too!"

Only in space was she poor, in the drifts, on Commonwealth planets that were far outnumbered by Earth and her impoverished comrades.

And she couldn't run. Her only way off the planet was with the help of the people who were inviting her into their family, and she couldn't refuse. So she picked the baby up, and held her dejectedly, and tried to hide her crying as laughter. The captain of the Maru realized that these people thought that Beka Valentine, She With The Thousands of Thrones, was going to save them.

But, from this...nothing could save them.

Least of all her.

**First Intermission  
(musical interlude)**

Have you been to the desert have you walked with the dead?  
There's a hundred thousand children being killed for their bread  
And the figures don't lie they speak of human disease  
But we do what we want, and we think what we please  
Have you lived the experience have you witnessed the plague?  
People making babies sometimes just to escape  
In this land of competition the compassion is gone  
Yet we ignore the needy and we keep pushing on  
-Bad Religion "Punk Rock Song"


	2. Act Two

**Act Two  
Scene One**

"Breeendan..." Something crawly landed on her grubby neck and she lazily rubbed it away. Her head hurt. "Brendaaan...get uuuuup," Beka managed to crack her eyes open in the brown-dusty haze of early Earth morning.

Seamus was standing over the figure of his slumbering cousin, shifting restlessly from side to side, toeing the older man with his newly bandaged foot. "You gotta go t'work, mannn..."

"G'back to sleep, Shay," Brendan murmured blearily, rising slowly to his feet. Beka regarded him from her spot on the dingy floor, for a moment having forgotten where, exactly, she was.

"Ozzie came by, he said he got in trouble 'cause'a you bein' late,"

"Did he now? That's a shame." Something in Brendan's voice revealed that, really, it wasn't. He looked over to where Beka was sleeping, and she smiled nervously up at him. A slow, tired grin spread across his handsome face and he didn't turn away from her when he said: "Shay, go get some food for our friend here,"

Seamus rolled his eyes and huffed off, muttering something like "Way outta my league..."

Brendan watched him go, silently, a little softly, and then wandered over to where Beka was still lying. On the floor of one corner of their little alcove she lay, near Joy's cradle, covered in her leather jacket. She hadn't noticed the giant, dusty spiderweb just by her head, and it was all for the better that she hadn't.

"I'm sorry about your sleeping conditions. I should've gotten somebody to walk you back to your ship. I know it's not what you're used to."

"No, I..." Beka trailed off when she realized she really had nothing to say to that.

"Look, I..." Brendan kicked his bare feet in the dirt a little. "I'm sorry about yesterday. I mean...all that stuff I said about you and...Shay. It was...I was drunk," he hastily explained.

"Ah," was her response, like that really explained everything. Truth be told, the encounter had knocked a particularly big chip off her shoulder, and she was still reeling, so the apology felt good, almost empowering.

Of course, anything would feel empowering around these people.

"I don't know what I was thinking. I...had a stupid idea and..." He sighed. "It's not unheard of; other kids have gotten married off Earth, but..." Beka wanted to say something to make him stop his little tirade of self-torture, but she really had no words. Brendan looked like he wanted the earth to swallow him up. "I wouldn't do that to him!" He cried adamantly, hungover, exhausted tears springing to his beautiful blue eyes.

"No! Brendan, I...I know..." She felt worse than she ever had before, in a different way than ever before, and she sprang to her feet. "I didn't...I never thought that. I know you're just looking out for him."

"He's a good kid. He's smart." Brendan dug the heels of his palms into his ancient, weary eyes. "He deserves better than..." He heaved a great, sobbing hitch. "I hafta go to work. I'm going to get a beating as it is,"

Horrific images ran through Beka's mind and she winced, but she didn't say anything. Without a second word, Brendan was out the portal of the little subway alcove, and a little while later, while Beka was dusting off her leather jacket and shrugging it back on, Seamus reappeared, grinning like he'd just invented the wheel and holding a small loaf of bread.

"Here," He cheerfully handed her half of the hard, stale bread, like he was handing her the Engine of Creation. He almost giggled when he took a small bite of his own, the hardness of the bread evident in the sound his teeth hammering into it made.

"Uh..." /Hide your distaste, you selfish bitch/ Her inner self yelled at her. "I have some canned stuff back on my ship...how about we go back there for breakfast?"

"Really?" His glassy blue eyes widened, not the sort of widened that a child gets at the prospect of a present, but rather the sort of suspicious cock-eyed widening. "Are you sure?"

"Sure I'm sure." She sighed when she saw the suspicion in his face. "Look, I'm not going to poison you or anything. I'm completely trust-worthy. You took me into your home and let me spend the night, it's the least I can do,"

Seamus cheerfully led her out of the winding subway tunnels and down the dusty, eroded streets of Boston towards the sand flats. By the time they got there she felt like she had walked through a dirt devil and wanted nothing more than to spend a few hours washing and brushing through her hair.

"...I've never been inside a real spaceship before, you know," Seamus said shyly when they reached it. "I...and I mean, yours looks different than the other ones."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Beka had taken too many cracks about the Maru as a child, and she wasn't ready to start that all over again.

"Well, I mean, it looks...realer. More...more authentic. Those other ships that take off over here sometimes, they're just so big and silver and...I mean, they don't look like anything around here, you know? And a lot of their parts are made in our factories. So I don't really believe they're real." He smiled. "This, though...is just so freakin' cool!"

Beka tried not to beam.

"I bet it's nice inside," Seamus went on.

"Well, come on in, see for yourself,"

"Oh, no," he said with the humility of one who had probably been turned away from countless doorways. He looked down at himself, and Beka could have sworn she saw him looking scornfully at his hands. "I'd just dirty it up,"

"You can get a shower." Seamus blinked at her and she realized, again, it was just another word to him. "You can bathe. Wash all that crap off," Seamus blinked even harder. "It'll feel good, trust me. And I'll...well, we'll beat off your clothes, anyway."

It was obvious Seamus still had no idea what she was talking about, but he came in anyway.

"Wow..." There was an awed hush-ness about him when he took it all in. All the connecting rooms and walkways were relatively small, almost as small as his own home, but much cleaner, and, well, obviously the whole thing could fly. Imagine that. Living in a flying home.

Beka popped her head into the sleeping quarters. "Bobby," She whispered. He didn't move from where he slept face down on one of the bottom bunks. "Bobby! One of the kids who's gonna work for us is here,"

"Mmm," Was his reply.

"We're going to have breakfast and be here a while if you want to come meet him. I think you should. This is a partnership, after all," She coloured the word 'partnership' a little more harshly than she had intended to.

"Fuck off..." Whatever.

"This is the coolest thing I've ever seen!" Seamus yelled from the bathroom. Obviously he had found the shower. He stood in there, fully clothed, staring up into the showerhead like he'd just seen the face of God. "You have a freakin' clean water well in your home, Valentine! Do you know how awesome that is?" He opened his mouth to the stream.

"Seamus, that water's not for drinking, it's for bathing," She winced at the memory of the soapy tasting water and the feel of it on the back of her throat, but Seamus was still esctatic.

"What?" He looked like a bedraggled wet kitten, standing there in the running water, his dirty, muddy clothes plastered to him, a constant stream of grime and soot running down the drain with the water.

"Ugh," Beka managed to keep it to a very low murmur and just started peeling the clothes off him.

"What're you doing?" He squealed.

"You have to be naked in this or you're not going to get clean,"

"No way! Do you know how sick that's gonna make me?"

"You're not going to get sick," She muttered, and then proceeded to do the most awkward thing she had ever had to do. She bathed a squirming, protesting street kid from the Planet Freakin' Earth. She tried not to notice his myriad scars and bruises, or the way his bones stuck out, or how he could have been very attractive if he had some meat on his bones.

She did smile, however, when his stubbly hair came clean and was revealed to be a light blonde, and she wondered if Brendan's natural colour was the same.

Seamus was eerily silent when he sat on the toilet in a towel seven sizes too big for him, waiting for his clothes to dry out from where they hung on the side of the shower door, and for Beka to finish changing the bedraggled bandage on his foot and his hands.

"Why aren't you saying anything?" Beka asked softly. She was afraid she had offended him somehow; she was only trying to help him, and she would have stopped if he had asked.

"I'm trying not to breathe right now." Seamus said innocently, and he was being serious.

"Why not?"

"I'm all wet. Don't want to let the bugs in."

She tried not to laugh, she really did. "That's ridiculous. Even if you were in danger of getting sick, that's not going to help them."

"Easy for you to say," He squeezed out through clenched teeth. He snapped his mouth shut immediately afterwards. "You have IT. You never get sick."

She wanted to tell him that wasn't true, because it wasn't, she still got sick- it was just never a problem. A headcold would probably mean death to him.

Seamus didn't protest when she gave him one of Bobby's old shirts to hang around in, his eager smile showing that he understood it was only temporary. That angered Beka a little bit/I can be generous/ she thought. /God dammit, I am generous/

He was positively drooling when she gave him breakfast, and it really wasn't all that much- a carton of orange juice, a muffin, some hashbrowns. He ate like there was no tomorrow and she swore to God he came when he drank that orange juice.

"Thank you so much, I don't- I don't know how I can repay yo-" He suddenly stopped and a look of horror crept onto his face.

It took Beka a moment to figure out what was going on. "Oh no. No, no, Seamus! It's on me, I'm not taking it out of your pay. I already gave that to Brendan, anyway."

"Okay." He still didn't look too trusting. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Go 'head,"

"This your first time on Earth?"

That caught her off guard. She stared into her coffee. "Yeah."

"Don't like it, huh?"

Beka shifted uncomfortably. "It's different."

Seamus looked down at his empty plate. "I don't like it either," He shrugged. "But I've never been anywhere else, so I can't really say." He paused, his chin sticking out proudly. "I'm going to leave one day, though. I'm going to get out of this hell and make a lot of money and come back and save all my cousins and friends." He smiled sadly at the thought. Beka watched him closely and allowed herself to smile too. "I'm going to come back and kill them all, all the Nietzscheans here," Beka looked at him sharply. "And all the Magog that come down and raid us and kill us and lay their eggs, and all the-"

"Seamus..." She put one of her hands on his before she screamed.

"Sorry," He said quietly, dropping his eyes. He was silent for a good long while. They both were; an awkward, viscous silence that only got more and more unbearable. "Hey," he said, after what felt like an eternity. "Do you think if I saved the thousand thrones I have now and kept picking up jobs like this, I'd be able to buy a ship like yours one day soon?"

Beka couldn't look him the eye. "The Maru has been my home for as long as I can remember. I couldn't tell you how much my father paid for it, and I sure as hell couldn't tell you how much I'd sell it for." She shrugged a little. "Technically, it is worth a lot less than those ships you see in the spaceport, though, so..." That was all Seamus needed to know. He smiled broadly.

Beka just looked away and wished he hadn't asked her that.

**Scene Two**

Beka took her own shower after Seamus had left. He had felt so good after the shower and meal, he told her, that he was eager and rearing to go get working on digging his well. She had mentioned before he left, candidly, wrongly, that something was wrong in the temperature controls in the shower and apologized if it was too hot or cold. He had smiled, in the confused sort of 'too hot?' kind of way and offered to fix it for her. Beka had blinked, and eventually accepted the offer, as long as she could pay him.

He had grinned even wider and she could swear to God she saw plans for a fleet of spaceships in his impressionable, sleep-starved eyes.

How was Beka supposed to tell him that a thousand thrones was child's-play when dealing with spacecraft? Sure, in a general sort of sense a thousand thrones was a lot of money, and it was obviously a freakin' fortune when it came to the people who lived here. But in the world of real spacecraft, it meant nothing.

Beka toweled off her nano-infested hair and stared at her pale, sullen face and thought about her life. She had spent, or wasted, so much of it trying to avoid ending up like her father.

And she succeeded. She had. She was living her own life, independent, free from the sort of danger and hassle and recklessness he had brought upon himself and everyone who needed him.

Sort of.

She still couldn't remember the last time she had spent two weeks single. She always had someone, and they almost always controlled the primary aspects of her life at the time. It was Bobby's idea to start running illicit again, it was Bobby's idea to pick up this particular job on this particular shithole, it was Bobby that kept her here, making her feel this way.

And he was all Beka had. She didn't have a family like Seamus or Brendan. Her mother having left when she was a child, her father being…less than desirable as far as those traits go. She hadn't seen Rafe in God knows when, and she hadn't actually felt close to someone in…well…ever?

Bobby was sitting up in the mess hall when she was done, sipping orange juice from a container slowly, sitting in the same seat that Seamus had occupied about an hour earlier.

"…morning," He said softly, trying not to meet her gaze. She just looked back at him. "I…I'm sorry about last night. I just sorta wigged out on you. I was tripping. I'm sorry,"

Beka only stared at his bowed head a little longer, felt a deep rage bubble up inside her and then suddenly subside, disappearing to be replaced by a hot embarrassment, and a sort of shame. Why would he apologize to wigging on out her when she was induced it? She shouldn't have kept a journal if she didn't want people reading it.

"S'okay," She muttered, approaching him a little slowly.

"I'm sorry I didn't come to meet that kid this morning. I was still feeling a little sick. I shouldn't have left you hangin' like that,"

"S'alright," She was standing in front of him now, a little to the side.

"You met with a bunch of them last night?" He finally looked up at her, the pearliness gone from his eyes, his gaze steady for the first time in months.

"Yeah,"

"And?"

"They know who he is. They might know where to get it," She offered a faint smile. "Brendan, the ring leader, he's talking with them today, figuring a plan out. We'll know tonight,"

"I wanted to be done by now," Bobby said.

"Oh, well, you sure went about the right way!" The anger was back. How dare he-

"I'm sorry," He said again, and snagged her wrist. "I…I was useless, I know. I won't leave you hanging like that again. We're in this together,"

She didn't resist when he pulled her down on his lap. "We'll be all right," Bobby said, with the same charm she had seen in him back at that party on that drift, the charm that had been missing as of late. "We won't have to do stuff like this again. We'll make a name for ourselves. It's a lot of money, Beka," He kissed her brow. Five hundred million thrones was a lot of money, an amount of money she was beginning to think didn't exist after spending time here on Earth. "I won't do this to you again, Beka. I promise."

Beka looked up at him, red hair framing her angular face. "You promise?"

"Yeah. I promise."

She smiled and kissed him back.

-

"Well? What do you think?"

They had stolen another 'lunch hour', rushing through petro-chem to find Ozzie and hiding behind an insect-hive dumpster in one of the many alleys behind the arms factory.

"I don't know…" Ozzie said, in that whiny little voice of his. Carol slumped her shoulders and dropped her head and made an audible groan from her throat. Ozzie looked up at her. "What? It's dangerous."

"Not so bad. You can get in his office, it'll be easy to find." Brendan sat across from Ozzie on a garbage gun, baby Joy strapped on his back, leaning forward and pleading with his friend.

"Fuck right!" Was the heavily sarcastic response. "Like any of us 'assistants' know what he's up to. We're fucking guinea pigs, Brendan," He interrupted when Brendan opened his mouth, compelled to by the cynical look on the man's face. "Have you forgotten about Cailean and the acid-face fiasco?"

"No. No, I haven't," Brendan stressed the last word. "Look, I'm not asking yourself to blow something up or kill someone, Ozzie, you know I wouldn't do that."

Ozzie sighed, the boy was right. He was passive to a bloody fault.

"Look, there's a lot of money in it," Brendan's voice softened. "This woman gave Shay a thousand thrones to come to the ceidlidh. She gave me a thousand thrones to tell her that Kago Goyashu was the petro-chem overseer. She's loaded."

"Oh, yeah, She Who Has Everything." Ozzie wasn't impressed. "Like you can trust someone like that. I thought you were smarter than that, Bren." He stopped whatever it was he was about to say next when he say the exasperated look on Carol's face. "What? He asked defensively.

She stared at him a moment, rolled her eyes, and crossed her arms.

"Look, I know it's a lot of money, but…" He sighed. "I really don't think I could help. Find a disc. That's a load of information for me to work on, right there," He glared at Brendan.

"You've been in that office so many times! You've worked for Kago Goyashu for, what, seven years?"

"Yeah, and it was seven years of hell,"

"You don't think stuffing death powder is hell?" Brendan almost yelled, and Carol's acid glare accompanied it.

An uncomfortable silence descended on the trio, like a ghost had just walked through their midsts.

"I know….he keeps all his tech locked up." Ozzie glanced up at Brendan. "I know I could get into it if I had enough time to figure it out. The problem is that I can't tell any of the tech apart and fucked if I knew what to do about it."

Brendan sighed and stared at the ground. "Damn. You're right. We will have to get Shay in on this,"

"Oh, no," Ozzie started up again. "You already told me he was out. I thought that was the condition, there'd be no kids in this," He looked up at Carol. "And don't even think for a minute that you're going to-" His lover stopped that sentence when she slapped him in the face.

Ozzie froze, and rubbed his cheek and looked up at her. Carol pulled at the cable in her lips, and flipped him off.

She was telling him that she knew something they didn't, that she had known for years, that she couldn't speak of because of her physicality, that she couldn't write to them because of her lack of knowledge.

So Ozzie swallowed his pride, and his fear, and he swallowed the protectiveness over a lover that losing a child gives to a man. He sighed.

"Fine," he muttered. "But if She Who Has Everything screws us over, Bren, may it be forever on your head!"

**Scene Three**

He got a lot of strange looks, admittedly, being so clean and prim and proper and digging a godforsaken hole in the ground with this big, shit-eating grin on his face.

Seamus Harper, for his part, never felt better. Having eaten the best meal in his life and a thousand thrones stowed safely away for his sparkling wine future, he dug happily, eagerly. Some strength had returned to his underdeveloped bones and his emaciated muscles, a strength that had probably always been absent. He had been a sickly baby, of course, but as a rule he was a freakishly healthy Earther- most died before their fifth birthday. It wasn't exactly a blessing to live past that birthday, however.

He was hours into his work before he stopped and looked down at his feet, now surrounded with pooling water. "Oh my God…" He breathed, and he leaned down and scooped some of the water up in one work-calloused, scabby hand.

It was cool. And clear, he could see all the way through it. Seamus sniffed at it curiously, it smelt a little like urine and a little like moonshine; it probably had both of that in it.

Oh, well- it was better than nothing! Considering the diets of himself and his colleagues, urine was typically mostly water anyway. And there ain't nothing wrong with moonshine.

Seamus bit back a squeal of delight and refrained from tasting it. It might have arsenic in it, or cyanide, or any other runoff from the arms factory or the mines or the sweatshop.

He knelt down in the mud now, scooping up more and more of the cool, clear water as it welled up in unparalleled amounts. He laughed, until he realized that he had struck water early, and that meant he had to adjust all his former plans that weren't even written down anywhere, and that he didn't have any of his materials here. Seamus was suddenly afraid that he couldn't build the well fast enough and his gold-well of water would be lost.

But he kept laughing.

"That does not sound like the typical attitude to be taken when digging a brother's grave, boy," A frighteningly familiar voice came up behind him. Seamus froze, and slowly turned around, his clean little body covered in clean cool water.

"I…I was surprised, sir. I lost track of how deep I was digging and- I'm sick, see?" He put a hand to his forehead for emphasis.

"Sick, huh? Perhaps that's because you've been bathing." The Niet sneered the last word out, showing his distaste at whomever would allow a kludge to bathe in their water.

Seamus screwed up his face, tried not to curse loudly, and wished very hard that either he or the Nietzschean were dead right now.

"Why aren't you working in the mines, boy, or the arms factory?"

Seamus thought fast. "They said I was too small f'the mines. T'stupid for the factory." The Niet sneered, "You're not too ugly for the brothels, though,"

Seamus' breathing started getting faster and he felt the hot red blood of fear rip through his veins. His wit had finally escaped him and he was about ready to cry when Big Ugly descended upon him with fist and palms.

"How dare you try to deceive me, you little wretch!" He yelled, beating about Seamus' face. "I know you're worth something to me, kludge, and as soon as I can prove it-"

"What are you doing to my slave?" The angelic god-send feminine voice stopped them both. Seamus looked up gratefully through blood.

Big Ugly got up and looked cynically at Captain Valentine. "Yours?"

"Yeah. He's mine. And I paid good money for him, too, so I'd appreciate it if you kept your hands off him,"

The Niet crossed his spurred arms and glared at her. "Who did you buy him from?"

"His family. Who else?"

"Why? He's worthless. Look at him." It was obviously a ruse to get Valentine to sell. High level labour. Seamus shook with fear.

"Look at him? Why do you think I bought him?" A lecherous grin spread across Valentine's face, and Seamus had to admit that it looked pretty good on her. The Niet looked down at Seamus, who looked back up, fearfully, wiping all signs of intelligence from his glassy blue eyes.

"He makes trouble. Get him off-planet and out of my sight as soon as possible." There was no missing the threat in his voice.

"Done," Valentine replied. "C'mon, Shay."

He stood up hastily, wiping mud of himself and avoiding Big Ugly's gaze.

"Shay." He heard the Nietzschean mutter behind them, and he hated the way the word tasted in the man's mouth.

"Want to tell me what that was all about?" Valentine asked as soon as they had turned a corner.

"What what was?" Seamus asked back, still in play-dumb mode.

"That back there. Or do Niets always target you?"

Seamus only looked at her and didn't respond. There was no good answer for that question.

Valentine sighed. "Look, are you sure you're up to this?"

"What do you mean?"

"This job. You couldn't even defend yourself back there, and I promised your cousin I wouldn't put you in danger."

"What? I can plenty defend myself!" The old Harper attitude was coming back, and Seamus winced and kept his voice down. "I just chose not to there."

"Chose not to? Wh-"

"Look, you have to choose your battles," Seamus explained quickly. "It's how you survive. I can't just attack a Nietzschean, they'd feed me to their dogs." He wasn't exaggerating, but he was sure Valentine thought he was. "Besides," He went on. "It'll be a miracle if Brendan even lets me help. But I am up for it. I can handle myself," His voice went smooth and he smiled at her, trying to look suave, but he got the feeling he just looked like a skinny little kid with an idiot grin.

"Well…" Valentine stood there, regarding him. "We'll talk to them all tonight and find out there. In the meantime, do you want some lunch or something?"

Seamus grinned even wider and thought that, if he wasn't already in love, that was the clincher.

-

"I don't know," Ozzie said again. Everyone in the room sighed.

"What's not to know?" Seamus was close to losing it.

"Shay, shut up," Brendan spoke up. "Let Valentine finish, at least, Ozzie?"

"They're Betas, the guards always are." The redheaded captain went on. "They'll be swayed by money. They feel the need to prove themselves, and money is the only way left to do that. Me and Bobby can make up some elaborate story to sell them, we're good at that," Ozzie rolled his eyes, but Valentine didn't seem to notice. "You all go in together, stay where you're inconspicuous, and slowly break up. Ozzie gets into the office and does some routine work, you have Seamus in the vents in contact with Ozzie by headsets, he picks up the disc, hands off to Brendan in the hallways, who hands off to Carol somewhere else in the factory, and we'll meet her in the alley. It'll be fine."

"No. Uh-uh. I don't want Seamus involved." Brendan's demeanor was rocky.

Carol made a sound somewhere in her throat and nudged Ozzie. "Shay's the only one who's going to know what we're looking for, Bren," he said a little nervously.

"It was Seamus' idea," Valentine said, unhelpfully. Brendan shot his little cousin a withering glare. Seamus smiled weakly and waved at him.

"But…all that aside…I mean, this isn't exactly the kind of thing we do everyday, 'y'know?" Ozzie went on. "What if one of us screws up? What if I screw up?"

"Don't worry, Ozzie," Seamus said. "Look, it's easy. All you have to do is trust yourself. And me. And the…aliens." He jerked his head in the direction of Valentine and her menacing looking boyfriend, who still hadn't said anything.

Alien was the perfect term to describe them, too. They knew nothing about the world they were caught up in.

"Aliens, yeah." Ozzie snorted. "Can we trust you?"

"We'll pay you each four thousand thrones," Bobby finally said something.

A startled silence fell upon the room. Seamus saw Brendan's eyes widen. Four thousand thrones was the most amount of money Seamus had ever heard someone talk about. It was foreign to him, unreal, as alien as the in-house clean water well and packaged orange juice.

Valentine seemed a little startled at first, too, but then something changed in her face and it became neutral again. She didn't notice when a black fly landed on her wrist, and Seamus wondered at that.

"Four thousand thrones…" Ozzie whispered.

"Please, Brendan?" Seamus asked softly.

Brendan looked troubled. "I…" He trailed off. "What about you, Oz?"

"For four thousand thrones? Jesus, you'd better believe I'm in!" Carol nodded her assent as well.

Brendan looked over at his little cousin again, regarding him a long time. Seamus was still pleading with him silently.

"Well…" He said slowly. "It's not exactly like we have anything to lose, is it?"

Seamus grinned and bounded across the small alcove and crushed his big cousin in a hug.

It was his lucky day. He was getting off this hellhole of a planet.

He was.

**Scene Four**

"Today's the day," Seamus said softly. The early morning light burned through the pollution and shot through the tendrils of dust and dirt that floated through the hair. Seamus squinted his sickly blue eyes through the airborne grime at his cousin, who's short blondish hair was almost glowing in the oblique rays of the twilight.

"Mmhm," Brendan murmured shortly, staring down at the small piece of hard bread he had scavenged the night before. He broke off a part and handed it to Seamus silently.

Seamus sighed and stared down at the measly little crumb of sustenance, thinking sadly about the lush breakfast he had had the day before.

"What's your problem now?" Brendan asked sharply. The two were sitting across from each other on the floor of their tiny alcove in the morning light.

"What? Nothing." Seamus had angered Brendan somehow, he could tell, but he didn't know how to remedy it. "What…what are you gonna do with Joy today?" He asked neutrally.

"Take her with me. Only thing I can do." Brendan replied, still not meeting Seamus' gaze.

"Oh," Seamus said. He still didn't touch his 'bread'. "How do you do it, Brendan?"

"Do what?"

"Work twenty hours a day for those Niets and then go to a ceidlidh and then work another twenty hours?"

Brendan shrugged. "That's all the life I have, Shay. It's always been like that. You know that."

"Yeah, but…"

"We can't all be freakin' geniuses like you." That was a little hurtful. "We can't all teach ourselves to read and then go around building wells and flirting with spacers."

Seamus winced. He had lost a lot of friends in the refugee camp when he learned to read, they saw him as elitist and snobbish, even if he was the only one who knew what those words meant.

"You're right not to work for them, you know," Brendan went on. "You're right to make trouble for them. You're better than that," The double meaning, better than us, was still loud and clear.

"I'm sorry, Brendan, I didn't-"

"No, no, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to…I'm nervous." Brendan said softly, looking up at his cousin for the first time that morning.

"I know." The two said in amiable silence for a moment. Seamus took a breath. "It's going to be okay. You'll see." He smiled. "I'm going to get off-planet after this. I know that. I'll come back one day and make them pay and-"

"Shay!" The boy stopped. Anger had stated to well up in his voice. He looked down sadly.

"Sorry." He muttered.

"You know I don't like hearing you talk like that," Brendan said. "What have I told you about feeling that way about them?"

/You're not my father, you hypocritical bastard/ Seamus thought bitterly, but he didn't say anything.

"I don't want you to get your head stuck up in the clouds. Four thousand thrones isn't going to buy you a spaceship. Eight thousand thrones isn't going to buy you a spaceship. You know that."

Seamus blinked his eyes slowly, his insides shattered. Brendan was right.

"I don't mean to hurt you or anything, kid, you know that. But I don't want to see you get your hopes up either. It'll hurt even worse when you come down."

Seamus nodded sullenly. "I hate this," He said, barely a whisper.

"I know," Brendan conceded. "So do I. Come on," He softly took his cousin's arm and the two left the maze of zig zagging subway tunnel shanties.

-

"This is it," Brendan said softly, ominously, after the spacers had left to 'distract' the exterior guards and the four were left in the back alley. "You have them ready, Shay?"

"Yeah," The boy replied half-heartedly, shaken and disillusioned by their earlier conversation. He had two tiny wireless headsets, hastily slapped together by stolen tech scrap, for himself and Ozzie. Brendan smiled. "You really are a freakin' genius," He said softly, and an almost-smile crept onto Seamus' face, the term still carrying the baggage of the refugee camp children mocking him. He hadn't figured out a way to save his cousins. He hadn't been able to save his parents from…

He could build headsets and wells. Oooh.

Brendan looked away for a second. "I'm sorry I said that stuff to you, okay?" He leaned down to make up for their height difference, his voice low. "This is gonna be fine. We're gonna make a fortune. And you just keep dreaming if that makes you happy." He pulled Seamus in for a hug. Seamus screwed up his face and pushed his cousin back.

"You're makin' me nervous," He said haughtily, smoothing out his ragged hoodie. He handed Ozzie his headset and helped him put it on, hiding it under the man's fuzzy, curly hair. When everyone was ready, Brendan and Ozzie lifted Seamus up on their shoulders, and he disappeared into the ventilation system.

Once he was inside he spent a few minutes scrambling around, trying to get his bearings in the darkness. "Ozzie?" He hissed a whisper. "Can you hear me?"

_-Yeah, Shay. What's up?_

"Where are you?"

_-Still in security. Shut up for a minute._The voice had dropped much lower. Seamus listened intently to the shuffle, moving ahead slowly.

-_There, I'm through. I've got a distance to go 'till I get to the office. I'll stay in the waiting room until you can see me, all right?_

"Sounds like a plan," Seamus whispered, hiding his excitement/fear. He slowly crawled down the pipes, carefully, peering into each room. Eventually he found the rather posh waiting room of an office, and his eyes widened. That's where Ozzie worked? Jesus. No wonder he was so worried about getting got.

There was no sign of Ozzie, however, so Seamus continued on. He had seen a rather impressive looking door on the side, and headed in what he presumed to be the direction of that room.

He got to the vent opening and peered down, in on- oh shit. It was the Nietschean who had attacked him in the streets the day before.

His body jerked involuntarily, remembering the assault.

Big Ugly suddenly looked up, his superior hearing picking up every minute scratch that Seamus was now making.

"Fuck!" He whispered. "Ozzie! Ozzie! Go get Valentine!"

-_Shay? What's going on?_ "Oh, man!" His breath had started hitching, heaving, his throat felt like it was being fused shut. His voice was that of a terrified five-year-old girl. Big Ugly was now standing, his force lance poised at the disturbance in the wall, waiting for another sound to surface. "I screwed it up, Oz. I'm so sorry."

-_Shay?_ Seamus didn't hear anymore as a fiery hole was ripped all around him and he fell into his worst nightmare.

-

Brendan looked up from the line suddenly, and over at Carol.

Their hearts skipped simultaneously, but neither was to know that.

Something terrible had happened.

**Second Intermission  
(Musical Interlude)**

Gotta sky that looks like heaven  
Gotta Earth that looks like shit  
Getting hard to tell where  
What I am ends  
And what they're making me begins  
-The Eels "Climbing Up To The Moon"


	3. Act Three

**Act Three****  
Scene One**

"Shay?" Ozzie remained silent, frozen as he was in the hallway. "Shay!" He hissed again, but there was no reply from the other headset. He couldn't even hear if Seamus was hurt, or what was going on.

Just silence. Deathly, cold silence, like the one that comes before a storm.

"Oh. My. Fucking. Christ." Ozzie muttered slowly, and he timidly took the headset out of his ear slowly and stared at it with horror. He hoped it was a problem on his end, because if Shay…

Dammit.

Ozzie tapped the headset against the grungy, dirty wall a couple of times gently, then he hit it a little harder than he intended, and it fell apart.

Well, fuck.

Ozzie trembled slightly as one of the overseers, who luckily didn't know him by name, passed by.

/Please don't/ Before Ozzie could even finish the thought, the Uber was looking at him with narrowed eyes.

"Where are you supposed to be, kludge?"

"Uh…the lines, sir," Ozzie said quickly.

/No, you idiot! Go back to the office and help Shay!Are you fucking insane? You'll be killed/ "Then you'd better get back there before you master misses you, shouldn't you?" The Uber glared him down, obviously a little disappointed that he didn't have an excuse for a beating.

"Yessir," Ozzie replied hastily, and turned, visibly to run. He felt a sudden force on his back and fell to the ground painfully. He heard the Uber chuckling behind him. When Ozzie got up again, his tormentor was gone, and he fled to he assembly lines, leaving his anxiety about Seamus behind him.

-

"What?" Brendan's voice was inappropriately loud. A few other assembly line workers looked up disinterestedly, then back at their work.

"Shut up!" Ozzie hissed, still trembling visibly. "What's wrong with you? You want to get the rest of us killed, too?"

Brendan's lifeless face was coloured with fear. "Killed? Are you-"

"No, no! That's not how I mean it. He's fine, he has to be, we just…need to find him."

"What do you mean? What happened to him?"

"Nothing happened to him, it was the headsets. They….well, mine broke."

"How?"

"It doesn't matter! All I know is that we don't…have contact with Seamus. And…" Ozzie suddenly found the adjacent wall very interesting.

"And what?" Brendan suddenly looked as menacing as starved pacifist could.

"He…said some stuff."

"Like what?"

"Like shit, and…shit. How we should go get Valentine, and he was sorry, he screwed it up. He got caught, Bren." Ozzie unhelpfully filled in the blanks.

Brendan's blue eyes grew cold. Carol looked up sharply.

"Well we have to find him." He said simply.

"I don't think it's that easy," Ozzie stated, and was harshly interrupted.

"Jesus Chist Ozzie, do you think of anyone but yourself?" Brendan looked like he was going to strangle Ozzie. Joy, startled on her brother's back by his sudden movements, started gurgling in distress.  
"Hey, I'm plenty…I don't just…I need to look out for myself, I have to take care of Carol." Ozzie spat out.

Carol glared at him with all the animosity of an underappreciated woman and stood herself up to her full height next to Brendan.

"Fine. You're out. We'll go." Brendan and Carol turned together, leaving their post.

"Hey…wait! You guys!" They were all ready gone. "Bastards," Ozzie swore, and ran after them, casting glances here and there for Neitzschean workhouse masters.

-

"Well, well, if it isn't my pretty little troublemaker." Big Ugly stared down at Seamus, who stared back up at him blankly.

"I…." He started intelligently, his body still trying to process what exactly had just happened. His body ached, his flesh just barely singed. He was almost blind, deaf too. He could sense enough to see the big Nietzschean in front of him, still stretching out his force lance.

"It seems you have dug yourself your own grave, you wretched little kludge," Big Ugly stepped forward, smiling smugly at his own little joke. "I know who you are, Seamus Harper, and it was utterly stupid of you to pretend you were otherwise." Another (another!) Nietszchean entered, stopping to look at the scene before him with interest. "Ah, Aiello. You've chosen a perfect time to join our little party." Big Ugly turned back to Seamus, a sick grin on his face. "You're of great interest to me, Shay." He spat the little refugee's name back at him hatefully. "Not only do my…superiors wish your death, but if the rumours about you are true, you will be of great use to my colleague and I." Aiello took this time to give a disgusting, open-mouth smile, and look Seamus up and down. Seamus suppressed a shudder. "You see, Aiello here and I have a plan. We're developing weapons to use against the enemies of the Drago-Katzov that, if successful, will prove both our genetic worth and give us instant Alpha status."

Oh, barf.

"Why the fuck do you think I would care?" Seamus' voice was raised, hoping it would attract help, not caring if it attracted more Niets. Nothing was worse than this.

"I'd watch my mouth if I were you, you deceitful little mudfoot. Seamus." Big Ugly sneered again. "Like I said, you're of great interest to us. You're going to help us get our little weapons array up and running."

Seamus scowled. "I can't even read. I told you that."

Big Ugly gave a defeated little sigh. "Your lies do grow tiresome, Seamus. Shay. Even if you were illiterate, you'd still be able to work out the equations needed. With your famed mathematical skills, you will serve us well." He let out a little laugh. "Provided your naturally inferior brain can handle the port we're going to plant in your pretty little neck, anyway."

Seamus' eyes widened of his own accord. He kicked himself mentally.

"Yes, I see your trepidation. It makes you shiver so delightfully, Seamus."

/I fucking hate you/ Seamus' mind screamed.

"I'm sure you've seen those dataports on spacers before. You're quite lucky, you know. Usually only the wealthiest, most glamorous people can afford them. Yes, you've been blessed, little Seamus." Big Ugly shrugged. "Of course, most of those people acquire ports when they are infants, and they upgrade as their brain develops naturally, thus making the whole experience infinitely easier. It will be a miracle if you survive at all."

Aiello spoke for the first time, biting, laughing words. "And what if he doesn't survive, Goyashu?" His tone gave the impression that he knew quite well what would happen if Seamus didn't survive the proposed operation.

Big Ugly, Goyashu, shrugged. "Earth probably has lots of hidden little 'geniuses', what with the whoring and all." The other Nietzschean barked out a laugh, and Seamus twitched uncomfortably. "Our little Seamus might be left dumb, with the mind of a child. And you can have him, of course, Aiello."

Aiello openly leered at Seamus, who twitched even harder.

"Yes, Aiello has an affinity for mudfoot boys," Goyashu shugged. "I've never understood it myself, but I'm beginning to see it in you, Seamus."

As Seamus saw it, he had two options for survival here. He could do the honourable thing and attack Goyashu, who would probably kill him, but at least then he wouldn't be able to help in whatever their fiendish plan was. The other option was far less noble, but far more sensible, and it included simply running like hell and never looking back.

He went for the option that involved less kicking, and ran for the door.

The Big Ugly Bastard shot him! Right in the left arm! Seamus, surprised, startled, sore, and starting to get sanguinary, slid to the ground with a stunned flop.

Goyashu clucked his tongue regretfully as he and Aiello approached the downed mudfoot. "Stupid boy," He said hatefully. "We can only hope this doesn't translate over into your academic ability." He reached down for the boy.

Seamus, clutching his injured arm to him, kicked at the Uber blindly. "Fuck off, you sterile cock-sucking-"

In the wink of an eye, Goyashu had whipped off his belt and curled it around one arm, spurs erect and gleaming madly. He struck at Seamus several times, until his curses were reduced to whimpers. Then he shoved the belt awkwardly into Seamus' mouth, further reducing his vocalization.

"Now," The Nietzschean said pretentiously as his colleague Aiello scooped the still violently, painfully, squirming boy into his iron grip. "Let's hope you don't repeat that little incident!"

**Scene Two **

When Bobby got back to the Maru, he ran to the lavatory to empty his guts.

God, but this planet made him sick. He wiped the sweat off his face and leaned back on the floor for a little bit, catching his breath. Between the 'food' and the 'water' and the grimy brown air, he was losing his mind. There was the money, though, he reminded himself. The money was coming and it was plentiful, and it was coming soon.

Then why was he so damned worried?

Bobby glanced around, wondering if Beka had followed him. She said she was going to stay and wait, if he was quick enough. He went back to the bunk and reached under his mattress, finding the several small bottles and vials he had stowed there.

This was dangerous. This was probably the most dangerous he had ever done, and that was saying something. What, exactly, had he been thinking, hiring a bunch of kids that would probably just backstab him? He wasn't thinking straight, that's what. Withdrawal.

He sat down on the floor by his bunk and started mixing, sniffing irritably, looking up every now and then to see if Beka was coming though the door. She was holding out better than he would have thought, better than him, at any rate.

Oh wow…he hated to have to do this to her.

He did.

That's what he told himself, anyway.

Bobby finally had the stuff mixed and dropped it into his eyes, a few, gloriously burning drops in each. He jerked a little, his breathing hitched and then even out. He sighed contentedly.

There. That was better.

-

Beka was getting worried. It was taking a little longer than they had planned. Well, more than a little. The whole operation was only supposed to take a few minutes, in and out. In and out. She glanced at her watch and decided that five more minutes would not be unreasonable.

…Where the hell were they?

She wasn't going to let herself get nervous. When she was nervous she made mistakes, history had taught her that. Beka ran her hands through her red hair and tried not to shake too much.

The two guard Nietzscheans at the front that she and Bobby had been talking to had long since wandered off. Beka had seen Seamus scramble into the vents on the side, and watched the guards as they patted down the other three as they mingled in with the slave workers. They hadn't noticed anything…off about them. Idiot betas. Beka noticed the wireless earpiece on Ozzie right away. But then, she had been looking for something like that, allowing herself to be a little impressed at Seamus' work.

But then they had disappeared inside, about an hour ago, and that's the last she saw of them.

In and out.

Her mind raced with possibilities. What if they gave her away? She scowled a little, Seamus would never do that. She wanted to believe she meant enough to Brendan that they wouldn't do that. These people had nothing and they trusted her implicitly- they had invited her into their impoverished little family right away. But then, these people had nothing. Maybe they were willing to take what they could right away. Maybe they didn't believe the promise of another four thousand thrones each coming to them. She probably wouldn't believe it. That thought bothered her.

Dammit, she was trustworthy. She was generous. She wasn't like her father, she wasn't!

Then why was part of her twitching in anger?

And where the hell was Bobby?

At that thought, as if on cue, Bobby came walking quickly, jogging, out of the rising dirt of the road.

"Well?" He asked, stopping just far enough off that she couldn't quite see the milkiness in his eyes.

"Well, what?" Was her snippy come-back. She wasn't in the mood for him.

"Well, where are they? They should've been out here ages ago."

"Well, they're not. We're just going to have to wait." Beka didn't really have faith in that plan, but damned if she was going to let Bobby know that.

Bobby huffed and crossed his arms, and Beka noticed him trembling slightly. He wanted to go. He was wired.

"It's getting too dangerous. We…we really have to go soon."

Beka bit back a defeated sigh and looked away. "I know. Our pass is going to expire."

"What made you think we could trust these mudfoots, anyway?" Bobby asked bitterly. Beka looked up, clearly surprised. Her lips curled. "Me? It was your fucking idea, Mr. Illicit Cargo Runner. You cleared the whole thing." She put her hands on her hips, the familiar annoyance rising up in her, the one that was conjured by Bobby's condescending glare, the one that came more and more often. "It was also your idea to offer them each four thousand thrones, Bobby," She spat his name at him. "They probably don't believe you. They probably think you're going to turn them in."

Bobby let out an annoying, superior little 'pfft' sound. "Don't try to pin this on me, Beka. You found them."

Beka really couldn't believe it. The deal hadn't even gone bad yet and Bobby was already blaming it on her. "Shut the fuck up, Bobby, just shut up and wait."

"No."

"What?"

"No. Let's go. They're probably in there right now, reporting us. Or they got caught."

Beka shrugged it off, with a little less confidence than she would have liked. "Yeah, whatever. Like those Niets give two shits about those kids. We're fine, Bobby. Stop being so paranoid."

At 'paranoid', Bobby reached forward and grabbed Beka's shoulder. "I'm serious, Beka, let's go. It's not worth it."

"Not worth it? That much money is not worth it?" The anger rose up in Beka's voice as she saw the pearliness in his eyes for the first time that conversation. "Jesus, Bobby, are you tripping? What have I-"

Bobby twisted her arm in his painfully. "Let's go!"

Beka winced and wrenched her arm away. "No, you asshole!" She rubbed at the forming bruise on her pale, slender arm. "You're tripping, you're paranoid. It'll be fine. I can't believe you." Disgust rang clear in her voice. "You promised me-"

He hit her in the face, and Beka fell to the ground, her nose broken and bloodied. "I can't…I can't do this anymore, Beka. We have to go, now!"

Beka shook with all the fear of unwanted memories as he grabbed her arms again, painfully, and yanked her up. Bobby dragged her back, kicking, screaming, crying and bloodied, back to the Maru.

And the good people of Boston, having seen far worse in their relatively short lives, did nothing to help her.

**Scene Three**

Ozzie had run after them, calling their names, like an unwanted little brother.

"You guys!" He had whined. "Why won't you wait for me?"

Brendan had turned, suppressing an angry frown, and sighed. "Make up your damned mind, Ozzie. I don't want you here if you're going to take off on us."

Ozzie sneered up at him. "I still think it's stupid. But you'd think I'd let you and Carol try to do it yourself, dumbass?"

"Shut up," Brendan had sneered back. He was nervous and tired and not up for this. But he had to do it, for Seamus. They had to get him and make sure he was okay- that kid was the only one of them with a chance of getting off this rock. He had shifted Joy on his back a little and turned away. "Now be quiet and let's go."

That was at least forty-five minutes ago. Now they were down in deep, dark regions of the arms factory that was forbidden, that the two men hadn't even heard of before. Carol was leading.

"No offense, anyone, but where the hell are we?" Ozzie eventually asked.

/I can't believe you were ever a father/ Brendan thought cynically, rolling his eyes. He didn't say that, though, obviously. It would have been entirely uncalled for.

Carol looked back at Ozzie, calmly. She blinked her eyes serenely at him and then jerked her head down another corridor.

"Seriously, Carol, do you know where we're going?" Ozzie asked. Carol only nodded, still walking down the dark corridor she had indicated.

Ozzie humphed and hung back with Brendan, following her slowly. "I don't see how this is going to help Shay," He said unhelpfully. Brendan sighed, trying to keep cool, and reminded himself that he had faith in Carol. She knew her way around here better than anyone. "They're going to miss us, you know," Ozzie whispered.

"No one's going to miss us," Brendan scowled. "We're completely expendable. Stop being so paranoid."  
"Well, Kago Goyashu's at least going to miss me," Ozzie hissed.

Brendan rolled his eyes. "Oh, get over yourself…" He trailed off when he realized Carol had stopped. She was standing in front of the wide windows, opening up to a clean white room. She turned back, looking at them sadly, and nodded towards the contents of the warehouse.

Brendan and Ozzie approached the window slowly, cautiously, both of their mouths open fearfully. "Jesus fuck…" Brendan breathed.

-

They basically threw Seamus into the too-big, padded launch seat, and strapped him in easily, but Seamus still gave them a hell of a fight, kicking, scratching. He would have bitten them if weren't for the damned belt in his mouth.

He managed to scratch Aiello deeply, running a ragged gash down the Nietzschean's arm towards his bone spurs. Aiello had yelped, looked down at his arm, then up at Seamus. Then he gave him this disgusting, delighted smile.

Seamus was flushing hotly, but not for the reason Aiello would have liked. He was angry as hell.

Embarrassed, too. His scruffy, bloody, callused little feet left trails of dirt wherever he went in this nice, poshed-up surgery room. His clothes, such as they were, left the same such residue. His body had mistaken the leather in his mouth for food and he was salivating wildly, drool sloshing out from the sides of the belt and dripping onto his chest. He sucked it up savagely, but it didn't seem to help.

Goyashu, Big Ugly, pushed Seamus' head down savagely, and the boy tried not to cry. The Nietzschean smiled alarmingly as he strapped the boy's head back on the headrest.

"Now, now, little Seamus," The Nietzschean purred menacingly. Seamus sucked up saliva that was running out from the sides of his mouth. Goyashu pointedly ignored this. "Don't be too frightened. It won't be so bad. You'll thank us when we're done, I know you will."

/Not bloody likely/ Seamus thought furiously, still struggling in his bonds. His weak, underdeveloped little bones were no match, though, and his pale skin bruised quickly underneath the harsh restraints. After having taken that shower, he felt dirty. He had never felt dirty before.

The two Nietzscheans stood back a ways and watched as Seamus struggled for a few brief minutes, until he was exhausted and worn and looked up at them, defeated.

"There," Goyashu said smugly. "If you're quite done and ready to pay attention, Shay, I'm going to explain to you what we're going to do."

He turned on the monitors of an elaborate computer system built up along the side of the room. Seamus' eyes widened, half in awe, and half in horror. Several large missiles were lined up in a clean white room, waiting patiently for their fate.

"We built fifty nuclear warheads, did a pretty good job if we could say so ourselves," Goyashu and Aiello shot each other pleased smiles. Seamus rolled his eyes, and luckily for him, the Ubers didn't notice. "Now, what we need from you, my wretched little kludge, is this," Goyashu held up a small, slim diagnostic disc, and Seamus recognized it as being the one Valentine had described to them. "On here is all the information those weapons need to be online, as well as the coordinates of their target. Once you have your dataport, you are going to be jacked into this computer, and you're going to upload all the information from here," He shook the disc. "To there," He jerked his head at the monitors. "You're going to aide us in the destruction of fifty Jaguar slave planets," Goyashu smiled broadly. "And become the most valuable kludge in Drago-Katzov property. And you'll be ours." He smirked again. "Unless, of course, your brain short circuits. In which case you'll just be Aiello's." Now the other, lecherous Nietzschean smiled broadly.

Seamus rolled his eyes. It was the stupidest thing he had ever heard. They hardly needed him to make this work. He wanted to say so, but he had to settle for sucking the drool out from the sides of the belt in his mouth.

Goyashu's face feigned pity. "Oh, my poor little mudfoot. Here, I'll take the belt out and you can get all that nasty stuff out of your mouth. Will that make you happy?" Before waiting for an answer, Goyashu stepped forward and unstrapped the belt that was wedged in Seamus' mouth.

The shorn, scabby-headed boy spat a big wad of saliva in his face. "Let me go, you stupid fat ugly-"

Goyashu put an end to that insult by punching the boy pointedly, ignobly, in the stomach.

Seamus gasped painfully and would have doubled over if he weren't strapped down. Blood coughed itself up into Seamus' mouth and dribbled down his chin a bit.

"There, there," Goyashu went on like it hadn't even happened. He held a cloth to the boy's mouth and wiped it out harshly. "That's better, isn't that better?"

"Why don't you just do it yourself?" Seamus asked weakly before the belt was jammed back in.

"Because," the Big Ugly Nietzschean said, his words measured. "I am not going to risk putting a dataport into myself or my comrade, that's just stupid. And this particular engineering has to be done just so, and the easiest way to do that is to have one with complete intellectual devotion to the project at that time, and that calls for a person with a dataport." He turned and looked back at the boy, helpless and gagged in his bonds. "And with you, either way it's win-win. If we fail, and you end up dumb, Aiello can think of great fun to have with you, and you'd still sell for a good price to a brothel or a breeder. Your genes will still carry your intellect, after all." Goyashu said the word 'genes' with a distasteful sneer on his face. "And if we are successful, we have you to do the work for us, and we can sell you to the men who have been after you for quite an amount." He smiled sickeningly. "There are very powerful men who want your mind, Seamus. You weren't very smart about keeping your 'superior' intellect a secret." The sneer was back. "Why do you think they killed your parents looking for you?"

At that, Seamus started struggling anew, his eyes filled with anger and hate. He had never really wished someone dead before, but there was always a first time for everything.

Goyashu sighed. "I tire of this," he waved a hand dismissively. "Aiello, fetch the implant, and I'll prepare him."

Seamus didn't even have time to think when his head was forcefully jerked to the side underneath it's band restraint. He barely saw the spidery little tool that Aiello handed off to Goyashu, but he felt the small, circular cool metal on the skin of his neck.

A searing pain ripped up from his neck and into the back of his skull, and it continued to rise and swell as time went on.

Seamus prayed that he would pass out and everything would turn to black, but it didn't. He was kept painfully and excruciatingly conscious. His vision went white, and then came back super-sharp; he could see the tiniest nuance and contour of everything around him, and feel the sweat dripping down his forehead and the tears on his cheeks with acuity.

And despite the belt stuffed in his mouth, he still screamed.

**Scene Four **

Bobby had pushed Beka into the Maru's cockpit, with a slap and a punch and a haughty "Fuck you, whore!". He had then commanded her, using violence and threats of more violence, to make the first stream in the direction of Telsa Drift.

She almost didn't make it. She was so shattered, weeping uncontrollably, too much in a bad state of mind to realize what, exactly, she was doing. The slipstream jump really hurt her, and after it was done she slumped over in the pilot's chair, dead tired, still strapped in. Bobby got up from where he was strapped in and, grumbling, disappeared into the bunks.

Beka's neck had exploded into a blossom of pain and she hissed, rubbing at it, trying to make the familiar agony of depressurization just…go away. She was still crying.

And Beka didn't cry very often.

What had she done wrong? She hazarded a glance behind her, towards the bunks, and sniffled pitifully. Flash again.Jesus.

What was wrong with her? Why did every man important in her life do this to her? She would have done anything for her father, indeed, she did on more than one occasion, and he tripped out on the flash hardcore before he left her.

She did anything for Rafe, and eventually he abandoned her as well. All the men in her long string of boyfriends were like that, and each time she felt worse then before, used, useless.

She'd do anything for Bobby to get him to stop.

With that, Beka rubbed half-heartedly at her still aching neck, unstrapped herself, and got up. Unaware that her face was still covered in drying blood, and she looked like she had just gone through a meat grinder, she padded weakly to the bunks.

Granted, her nose was healing nice and straight thanks to the nanobots already in her blood, but her voice was still plugged and nasally as she poked her head into the bunks and said, timidly: "Bobby?"

He had crashed on one of the bottom bunks, the pearliness in his eyes having faded, his breathing ragged and uneven. He was awake but he didn't respond to her voice. She approached the bunk slowly. "Are you mad at me?" She asked, her voice that of a scared little girl.

Bobby sighed. "No…not really."

Beka sat on the bunk softly. She felt his hand stroke her thigh. "Then why did you do that back there?"

"I was scared. I didn't wanna get caught, Beka, you know that." He smiled at her, that condescending, humouring smile that was replacing his normal, charming one more and more often.

"Well…if I did make you mad, I'm sorry." She said softly. She felt like she was talking to her father again.

Bobby sighed. "Aww, c'mere," He dragged her down softly and she laid her bruised, bloodied face on his chest. He stroked her red hair and let out a small, weary breath. "It's okay. It was just dangerous, is all. Too dangerous. Gotta look out for my girl, right?"

Beka bristled a little at that comment, and said nothing.

"We should probably just head on back to ol'Alpha Jaguar and tell him what happened. Tell him some mudfoots betrayed us and we couldn't get his stuff."

Beka bit her lip before asking: "Are you sure?"

"Sure I'm sure."

"He's not gonna…kill the messenger or anything?"

Bobby looked down at her head like she were a child. "Don't worry about it, baby, I'll deal with it. I won't let anything happen to you."

Beka scowled a little at this, but she needed to be near him right now, so she burrowed her face into his shirt more. "You just do as I say," Bobby went on, his grip around her tightening. "I know what's going on. You'll do anything for me, right?"

"Yeah, Bobby." She said softly, dejectedly.

"Yeah. Good. You know I'm nothing without you, right?" He looked back down at her.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Beka shifted a little in the silence, and propped her chin up on his chest. "Bobby?"

"What?"

"Would you…stop dropping flash? Just for a little? I mean, you promised before and you know how much it bothers me…"

Bobby groaned, just a little, and rubbed his wasted face. "I…I'm trying, Beka, you know that. You can't keep asking me that, you know how hard it is."

"Yeah, I know. Just…try a little harder?"

Bobby narrowed his eyes and looked away. "Fine. I'll try."

Beka nodded approvingly and nestled back down on his chest. She tried not to think about how Seamus or Brendan wouldn't question her if she asked them something like that, how their makeshift little family didn't rely on each other for personal gain, but for necessity.

She really tried hard not to think it was ironic that They Who Have Nothing were far happier than She Who Has Everything.

**Scene Five **

"How many do you think there are?" Brendan asked, rhetorically, as the three stared out into the clean white-room. Row upon row of lethal looking missiles were lined up inside, waiting for their orders.

"Wh…what do you think they're there for?" Ozzie asked quietly.

Carol looked over at her shoulder serenely at Ozzie, and rolled her eyes.

"For…mass destruction, dur," Brendan bit his lip. "Do you think they're going to test them here?"

Ozzie looked up at his friend, his eyes widened under his homemade spectacles. "I didn't even think of that! Jesus Christ! What're we gonna do?"

"I don't think there's anything we can do," Brendan said sombrely. "Except…do you think this is what Valentine hired us for? Maybe the discs are the specs for these or something."

"Well, if that's the case…" Ozzie's hushed voice still echoed slightly in the corridor. "Then maybe we should just get out of here. Screw her. If she wants to steal these things, what's she going to do with them? Blow us all up?"

Carol looked back over her shoulder again and shook her head.

"Seriously," Ozzie went on. "She could either be…trying to disarm them all, or using them herself, or stealing them for someone else. I doubt she'd disarm them, that would be pointless."

"'Cause they'd just build more…" Brendan added softly. "And if she is working for an enemy of the Dragans, they'd just get us with 'em."

Ozzie sniffled a bit. "Either way I think they'd get us. The Dragans have other slave planets, they'll probably test those here and be done with it."

Brendan looked troubled. He shook the littlest bit. Joy slept happily on his back. "Whatever. It's pointless. We have to go find Seamus."

Carol suddenly grabbed Brendan and Ozzie by the arms and hurriedly led them to a small alcove, where they all pressed up against the wall, Brendan slinging Joy from his back and cradling her.

Several Nietzscheans opened a heavily sealed door from the inside of the white room, wearing heavy-duty radiation suits. They chuckled amongst themselves over something as they walked down the hall, letting the door automatically seal behind them.

Carol ducked her head into the corridor and looked both ways, quickly, like a cat, and somehow managed to slide in between the doors just before they sealed entirely.

"Shit! Carol!" Ozzie yelped, still managing to keep his voice low. He raced after her but as soon as he got to the doors, they were shut.

"Oh, Jesus fucking…fucking…Christ!" Ozzie actually yelled, and he kicked the door, a painful clang resounding in the corridor.

"Shut up Ozzie!" Brendan hissed, Joy cradled in one arm, his other hand pressed against the glass. Carol had run into the white room, naked of a radiation suit, determination loud and clear in her silent eyes. "What the hell are you doing, Carol?" Brendan whispered as he tapped the glass lightly. Carol turned and gave him a sickening parody of a smile, her lips stitched shut with thick cable, her ragged, dirtied skirts trailing behind her. She left little dirty footprints on the pristine white floor.

Carol turned around and ran far over to the other end of the white room.

"Shit! Shit! We have to save her!" Ozzie's voice was quiet and hoarse, and he started beating at the glass.

"Are you fucking nuts? You'll…we'll be fried! All of us!" Brendan tried to reason with Ozzie, but it wasn't really working. At least he stopped pounding on the glass. "Carol knows what she's doing. We can't save her, without killing ourselves. We have to go find Seamus! Now! Let's go!" Trying to keep his voice from breaking, Brendan scrambled down the hallway with Joy in his arms. It was a while before he realized Ozzie wasn't following.

"Oz?" He turned around slowly. Ozzie was still standing at the glass, staring into the white room with horror.

Slowly, Brendan approached and joined him, looking into the glass. Carol was on top of a ladder, resolutely not looking at him, dismantling a nuclear missile with a wrench and her bare hands.

-

Beka stirred and looked up into Brendan's beautiful blue eyes. His red-gold hair was framed with sunlight. She smiled, and he smiled back, sweetly.

She was lying with her head in his lap. They were sitting on an impossibly green hill next to a running stream. They were planet-bound, which didn't seem to bother Beka for once. It was a pretty planet, anyway.

Beka sat up, slowly, still smiling coyly at Brendan. "How long was I asleep?" She asked.

Brendan shrugged, still looking into her eyes. "Dunno. Lost of track of time just looking at you."

Beka turned to look at the stream and felt herself blush a little, which was also a first. Brendan reached out and stroked her cheek. "Did I hurt you?" He asked softly.

"What?"

"You're bruised. Did I do that…just now?" His voice was full of concern. His beautiful blue eyes looked unbelievably sad.

"No…no, you didn't do anything." She smiled up at him. "It was an accident."

"Good," Brendan smiled again. "You know I'd rather die than hurt you, right?"

Beka felt herself blush again. "I know." Brendan smiled even wider, still cupping her cheek, and he leaned in to kiss her.

Then Beka woke up.

She woke up in her bunk on the Maru, in the same position she had fallen asleep in, except Bobby wasn't there.

Beka hazarded a glance at her wall timepiece. She had only been asleep for about ten minutes. Power nap. Her body needed to recharge after the slipstream jump and all that…emotional activity.

Beka stood and straightened out her clothes. She rubbed her still-healing nose and wandered into the mess.

Bobby looked up at her from the table, surprised.

He was mixing Flash.

**Third Intermission  
(musical interlude)**

I'm locked in your diary with all your complaining  
The curious scribblings of One Who Has Everything  
-David Usher "Unholy, Dirty, Beautiful"

And I looked into the mirror last night  
All I saw was a pretty blonde  
Why won't you just  
tell me what's going on?  
Life is funny, but not ha-ha funny  
Peculiar I guess  
You think I got it all going my way  
Then why am I such a fucking mess?  
-Eels "3 Speed"


	4. Act Four

**Act Four  
Scene One **

Bobby stared at Beka for what seemed like a lifetime.

"You're…you're up." He eventually said weakly.

"What are you doing?" Beka asked, acid in her voice.

Bobby looked down at the bottles and vials on the table, then back up at Beka. "Um….I was-"

"You asshole!" Beka's voice broke painfully and she lashed out at one of the cupboard doors, which shook painfully on it's locked hinges. "You promised me! You fucking promised me!"

"Beka, I can explain-" Bobby pushed himself away from the table with a scramble.

"Oh, can you?" Her voice was still agonizingly shrill. "You can explain to me why you broke a promise to me, and you kept treating me like…Jesus, Bobby, you'd deliberately go out of your way to get me angry! What's the fuck's wrong with you?"

Bobby was withdrawing. "Look, Beka, I-"

"I don't think I want to hear it!" Beka was trembling, her bone-thin hands twitching in anger. "You promised me you'd stop! You're just…you're just like him, you're just like him!"

Bobby didn't need to ask who she was talking about. His face darkened. "Whatever. You drove me to it, you bitch."

"Shut up!" Bobby's eyes really widened. It was the first time she had responded to his insults like that before. "Just shut the fuck up! I never want to hear your fucking voice again!" She sobbed out the last word and stood there, shaking, and it was a long time before she realized tears were running down her face.

She turned and got a glimpse of her reflection in the polished metal surface of the locked cupboards, her face still crusted slightly with blood, a sizable bruise just starting to heal around her left eye. Tears streaming down angry flushed cheeks. Tired, weary reddened eyes.

Beka took a deep, shaky breath.

"I…I've made you cry, haven't I?" Bobby asked softly.

Beka just looked at him, her eyes narrowing, incredulous.

Bobby, leaning against the wall, slowly slid to the floor. "I'm sorry Beka." He said, his voice shaking, and a few of his own tears slipped out.

Beka didn't move from where she was, far away from him as she could get in that room. "Why do you do it, Bobby?"

"I…" Bobby breathed in loudly, and wiped his arm across his eyes. "I don't know. I…I'm not strong, Beka, I'm not like you."

Beka slid to the floor now, too. They stayed like that for a good ten minutes, staring at each other sadly, crying, unwilling to go to each other.

"I don't mean to, Beka…" Bobby almost whined. Beka didn't want to believe him but a part of her, reluctantly, did.

"I…I don't want you on my ship anymore, Bobby." It finally came out, softly, barely a whisper.

Bobby didn't answer right away, his head hung low, crying. Beka thought maybe he didn't hear her, and winced, because she had such a hard time saying it first, she didn't think she could say it again.

"I'm sorry, Beka." He said simply, his voice that of a child.

"I'm sorry, too." She whispered back. But she still didn't go to him.

They finally docked at Telsa Drift and Beka watched as Bobby gathered his things slowly; he only had a few, small bags. She saw him out to the hatchway in one of the Drift airlocks.

"You…you think I'll see you around sometime?" Bobby asked, his voice still withdrawal-shaky.

Beka didn't meet his gaze. "Not likely," She had a hard time saying that, too, and kicked at the metal of the hatchway.

"I am sorry, Beka," Bobby leaned in and placed a harsh kiss on Beka's cheek. She didn't respond. She didn't even say anything as he made his way out of the airlock bay into the loading corridor.

As soon as the inner airlock doors closed, Beka opened the bay doors and took the Maru out.

She put the ship on autopilot to the slipstream jump point, then went to her bunk and cried and cried and cried, having just realized that no men in her life had ever truly loved her.

-

Chemicals and room-temperature water now flooded the white room. Big scraps of metal and nuts, bolts, screws and what have you were scattered amongst the sea of death chemicals, like frozen bodies after a shipwreck.

Fifty nuclear weapons were dismantled, and for a full two hours Brendan and Ozzie watched, horrified, their little 'freaking genius' temporarily forgotten.

Seamus was smart enough to get himself out of his fix…

Neither of them was smart enough to save Carol, or figure out why she was doing this.

The first half hour into it they could tell she was already hurting. Her movements lagged, she would stop to cough, painfully, and the stitching in her lips didn't help.

After an hour her skin was blistered up and bleeding, some of it turning green. Her radiation dose was much too high. If she could speak, Brendan was sure she would have been screaming. As it were, she simply shook and continued to do her work, taking apart components, emptying cartridges, disabling the weapons thoroughly. The doors were sealed so tightly that radiation wasn't about to get out. And if they were opened, it would ensure the deaths of everybody in a ten kilometer radius. The Ubers would never risk that. They'd probably sooner seal the entire facility off until the end of time than risk poisoning themselves, much less all those slaves.

The weapons couldn't hurt anyone now but herself.

Ozzie was crying outright, not even trying to cover it up. He pressed his hands against his face, whispering "Oh shit, oh shit…why? Carol…oh, please, Carol, I'm sorry, I love you, please…" And crying.

Brendan trembled, glancing over at Ozzie every now and then uncomfortably, gripping Joy close to him. He didn't notice that he, himself, was also crying.

Also at an hour, Carol had turned to them with her green, boiling face and gave them the finger, matter-of-factly, and gestured at them to leave.

Brendan had nodded, swallowing, and tried to get Ozzie to come with him.

"No." Ozzie had said, firmly. "I'm not leaving her. I don't care if I die here, too. I'm not leaving her."

So they watched for another hour.

Eventually the twenty-four year old slave, and mother of dead children, was finished with her work. Fifty nuclear weapons. Must've taken them years to build, and she made short work of them in two hours.

With quite the price, of couse.

She wasn't even recognizable anymore, as she stumbled over to them. Her feet were burned almost to the bone as she sloshed through hazardous chemicals, her skin literally boiling and peeling with every step. Brendan was almost sick. Ozzie sobbed even louder.

"I love you, Carol, I love you…" He kept saying, over and over, drowning in his own tears. Carol stood before them in the mirror, staring, her reddened, poisoned eyes filling with their own tears. Brendan wondered fleetingly if she could still even understand what was going on.

White, chunky, toxic vomit spilled out from the between the stitches in her lips. Solemnly, she pressed a mutated hand to her lips in a twisted travesty of a kiss, and pressed it up against the glass where Ozzie's own lips were mashed.

Some of her skin stayed behind when she took it off again.

Carol blinked serenely at them, and slowly slumped down to the floor, so close to the wall that it was impossible to see her through the glass.

"No, no!" Ozzie bayed quietly, pounding the glass again, softly, with defeated fists. "I love you! I love you! Please…Carol…"

"Ozzie…Ozzie…" Brendan reached ineffectually for Ozzie's arm.

"Why…why would she leave me like that?" Ozzie sounded like he had just had a stroke or something. Brendan grimaced.

"She…she did it so they couldn't hurt anyone anymore, Oz. So that…so we could go and save Shay and…and get rid of them one day." Brendan sniffled feebly, ignorant of the tears running down his face. "Ple…please, Oz, let's go. Carol…she wants us to. She told us to." Brendan put a hand on Ozzie's heaving shoulder. "She did it so we could live, Oz, you know that. Don't you?"

Ozzie, weeping, looked at Brendan fleetingly in the eye. "I don't know if I can live without her, Bren," It was barely a whisper. Ozzie made a fist and bit down on it hard, still crying, punishing himself for leaving her like that.

"Yeah…yeah, you can, Ozzie." Brendan took Ozzie's arm and slowly led him away. "We've…we've all done it before."

It was too bad that, as they were so wrapped up in their own grief, they didn't see it coming when they were cornered by the white room worker Nietzscheans.

-

No one was with Carol when she died a half hour later.

It would have taken longer if her organs had given out from the radiation poisoning.

Mercifully, however, she just choked to death on her own vomit.

**Scene Two **

Seamus didn't know what time it was when he woke up. He didn't realize he had been asleep, or passed out, or whatever state he was, exactly, in. But suddenly prickling spots of bright whiteness flooded his vision and he shot back to reality, cringing, like a babe yanked from the warm, safe womb of its mother.

His head was still strapped down, jammed to the side painfully. Saliva still gobbed out from the sides of the belt wedged in his mouth. One of the myriad scabs on his head was itching like nuts, but he was helpless to reach up and scratch it.

Life sucked.

"You're awake, Seamus," Goyashu said softy from where he sat to Seamus' side, his tools still in hand. "That was quick. You were only asleep a few minutes."

Seamus' entire outlook had changed. Everything was sharper, clearer…digital. He felt something scratching at the back of his eyes and he blinked rapidly to make it go away. His brain felt like it had been sucked out, categorized, and placed back neatly on tiny shelves stacked into his skull. He wanted to die.

"I'm really rather impressed," There was a shuffling around behind him, and Seamus struggled in his bonds to see what was going on, to no avail. "You took that quite well. A lesser kludge would have passed out long ago, even died. You, Shay…you're special, aren't you?" Goyashu gave his voice a nauseatingly sweet quality that made Seamus want to be sick. "Now we're going to test this out," Goyashu said, painfully slow, like he were speaking to a child. Seamus could hear someone else moving around, Aiello, in the background. His heart raced, even more so than it was before.

Seamus winced, and his breathing hitched, as he felt something cool and small painfully slide into his neck. Into his neck.

It felt like something was probing up inside his brain. It hurt, it fucking hurt!

"There, now," Goyashu cooed. Seamus wanted to kick him in the crotch. "That's not so bad, is it?" There was a slight click and a beeping sound. "Now just close your eyes and relax…" Like that was going to happen! "This isn't the real thing. It's a test. You're going to go into this program and fix those bugs. It's simple. It's a training program for children." He said the last word with disdain. Seamus heard another breath behind Goyashu's shoulder and realized Aiello was watching.

Seamus cringed as something activated in his port. Pinpricks of bright colour permeated his vision.

Suddenly it was as if he roused from a waking dream. He was standing, sort of, healthy and ethereal, in a glowing blue-green environment, scrolling information in 0s, 1s, and kanji characters brushing past his shoulders and over his skin.

It was confusing at first, but nice. Pretty. He had never seen anything truly pretty before.

He learned with glee that he could manipulate the environment to his will, change colours, conjure buildings…create. It felt good.

It didn't take Seamus long to find the 'bugs' that Goyashu was speaking of. They were mostly discrepancies in the kanji characters that flowed past him like cool, clean water. They were easy to fix, and Seamus felt a satisfied smile creep over his face as he healed this environment, feeling truly at home for the first time in his life.

He spent what felt like hours in there, lost in himself, in his work. Slowly everything faded to black and Seamus was left standing there, confused, staring at his digital hands, which weren't nearly as calloused and worn as his real ones.

Then he opened his eyes and his vision took a moment to clear, and he was still strapped into the padded chair, still gagged and gobby. Goyashu was laughing gleefully.

"The rumours were true. You did that all in just a few seconds. You're going to be very valuable to me, Shay!" He stood and undid the straps at the boy's ankles and wrists. Seamus was too weary, having done too much work in his perception, to even bother resisting.

Goyashu also took out the belt from Seamus' mouth, and chuckled when he helped lap up the gathered saliva and drool. Seamus was confused, disoriented, too much so to question it when Goyashu lifted him, almost tenderly, into his arms. Seamus was worth too much to bang around now.

"Now," The big ugly Nietzschean purred menacingly as he waddled over to the main computer with Seamus in his grasp. "We shall commence with more training, hmmm?"

"Uh, Kago, I don't think it's worth it now." Aiello said suddenly.

"What? Why?" Ignoring the boy still flailing feebly in his grasp, Goyashu leaned over Aiello's shoulder.

"That's why," Aiello breathed and pointed at one of the monitors. The white room was completely flooded, their nuclear weapons lying in pieces in the lethal sea. A girl, a skinny, boiled-up kludge was trudging towards the windows, where her kludge comrades looked on.

Goyashu swore a blue streak and dropped Seamus harshly, where he landed with a thud, knocking the back of his head against the side of the console. He looked up and saw the before mentioned discs sitting on the console, part of it hanging off the end.

Goyashu continued to swear, occasionally hitting Aiello as well. "Twelve goddamned years!" He yelled. "Ruined by a fucking kludge!"

Seamus, not really understanding what was going on, stared up at those discs for a long time. There was the diagnostic information needed to get the nuclear weapons online. The specs. Now the nuclear weapons were destroyed, and all that was left were these discs. The discs that Valentine had wanted.

He reached up quickly and snatched them, and, having no other place to stash them, he stuffed them in his mouth.

His already wet, undernourished mouth thought they were food, however, and before he knew what he was doing, he swallowed them whole.

Oops.

"Well, what're we gonna do now?" Aiello was saying.

Goyashu swore some more, then pulled up a communicator. "Herrera! Debreo!" He yelled at two other henchmen. "Some mudfoots broke into the white room. Go get them and dispose of them now."

Seamus didn't hear the response, but he did hear it when Goyashu and Aiello came to stand before him, staring down menacingly.

"Well, we don't have much use for you now," Goyashu said with a sneer, characteristic of those who take out their own pain on those already weaker.

Seamus cringed painfully, and then the beating began.

-

Brendan and Ozzie stopped short, staring up and up into the faces of the two big Nietzscheans who had blocked their path.

"Well, well," One of them said. "You're the clever kludges who broke into our stash, aren't you?"

"Ozzie?" Brendan whispered hesitantly.

"What?" Ozzie, still tear-streaked, was beyond caring what happened to him now.

"Run." Brendan said.

And that's what they did.

-

After she made the slipstream jump, which very nearly killed her like the first time, Beka went to the shower and spent hours cleaning off a lifetime of guilt and self-loathing.

She stood in front of the mirror after, staring at herself, at her now-clean face, and the healing bruise.

"You're not gonna feel guilty, Beka," She said aloud, bitterly. "And if you do, it's going to be because you left those kids on that shit hole planet in the middle of a mission. And that's why you're going back there. To set it straight." Blue eyes bored into blue eyes. "You're not gonna feel sorry for yourself, either, Beka. Took you long enough to figure it out. But it's over now. It's in the past. It's time for the rest of your life." She leaned back, staring at herself critically. Then, with a shake of her head, her hair turned blonde. "There," She smiled. "That's better. New look. New life. And you're not gonna get screwed around this time. You're tough. You're Beka Valentine. And nobody fucks around with Beka Valentine." She leaned back again, the smile even more genuine. Pleased with herself, she straightened her shirt, and went to the cockpit to see about obtaining a landing pass for the Boston sand flats.

**Scene Three **

He had never coughed up so much blood in his life. Seamus was getting seriously worried from where he lay, curled upon himself in an impoverished little ball, trying to block the blows to no avail.

Seamus had no idea how long the beating had been going on. It felt like forever. He was beginning to forget the unearthly beauty inside his own mind, and he wished now to be there.

He cringed and prepared himself for another kick to his already sensitive, heaving stomach, when the two Nietzscheans dropped like dead flies in front of him.

Seamus remained crouched where he was, too numbed to realize what had happened, and if did know what was going on, he was too scared to believe the force behind it was any good.

"Shay?" A tentative female voice asked softly. Seamus managed to barely crack one swollen eye open. Barely being the operative word. "Jesus fuck, what did they do to you?" The voice was angrier now, as she moved closer to him.

Slender, strong arms gripped him and helped him back up onto the surgical seat where she lay him down. "V…Valentine?" He managed to groan out.

"Yeah, it's me, kid. I'm so sorry we left you guys like that. But I'm here now, we're going to be fine."

Seamus' other swollen eye barely cracked open. At least he was 'seeing' in stereo. "…you killed them." He said blearily.

Valentine glanced down at the incapacitated bodies of the Nietzscheans. "I didn't kill then, they're stunned. At least, I think they're stunned. I…" She turned back with a flippant curl of her lips. "Oh, who cares if they're dead?"

Seamus almost smiled. "You came back." His voice was still painfully weak.

She shrugged indifferently. She was way cooler than he remembered her being. "What'd you think I was going to do?"

"I hadn't noticed you left." He smiled inadequately. "But, still…you came back. You didn't have to."

"Sure I did," Valentine bristled, it was barely noticeable.

"Those Who Have Everything don't…they don't worry about Those Who Have Nothing. They never do. I wouldn't have been surprised if you didn't come back." The little reddened slits that were his eyes closed, and he breathed deeply. "I would've been mad, though."

If he was still looking, he would have seen Valentine staring at her shoes uncomfortably and biting her lip. "I'd never…I'd never abandon you, Shay. I…I don't want you to ever think that, because it wouldn't happen." She shrugged again. "If we were to ever work together again, of course." She said, a little too quickly.

"What happened to your face?" Seamus' eyes were still closed, and his voice sounded like he was talking in his sleep. Valentine started.

"I…Same thing that happened to yours." She brushed it off.

"He hit you?" The sleepy voice had a tinge of anger to it this time. Valentine didn't answer. "If he were here, you know, I'd kill him." Seamus said with conviction. "Or I'd try, anyway."

Valentine smiled, and put an arm on Seamus' shoulder. Instinctively, to Valentine's surprise, he slumped over and rested his weary head on her shoulder. "You changed your hair with your IT, didn't you?" He asked astutely.

"Yeah."

She could feel him smile against her chest, the higher, flatter part of her bosom. "That's so fucking cool, Valentine."

"Thanks." The past feelings of anxiety and guilt that came with her from Telsa Drift, having almost been eradicated, were now completely gone. "Listen," She came back to reality and pushed him back up to a seating position; even if his eyes were closed he was still looking at her. "They were evacuating when I got here. That's how I got in so easily. A leak, they said. We have to find the others quickly and get the hell out of here."

"A leak?" Even bruised and swollen as it was, Seamus still managed to screw up his face in an accurate facial demonstration of his confusion. "Why would they evacuate for a leak?"

"It's radiation, Seamus. It'll kill us all if we're not careful."

"Radi…oooh," Something clicked in Seamus' mind. He cracked his swollen eyes open again and looked towards the monitor in trepidation. "Then we do have to move. Quickly."

Valentine looked over his shoulder, following his gaze, and immediately saw what he was talking about.

-

It was ridiculous logic, thinking they could outrun a pair of Nietzscheans, especially in their state- Ozzie still shocked, crying, without the will the live, and Brendan panicked, shaky, with a baby cradled in his arms.

It was the most terrifying thing Brendan had ever been through, and pacifists in his environment sit through a lot.

They didn't hear the sirens and evacuation warnings, or see the flashing lights down other corridors. Overhead lights flickered and soon they were left in the dark, lost, running blind and scared.

The cruelest part, Brendan figured, was that the Nietzscheans let them run for quite some time before they bothered to catch up. The two mudfoots could hear their laughter behind them, they could almost hear their breathing and feel their body heat. It was deliberate bullying, reserved for the lowest of colonial forces, whose only resort to prove superiority and dominance was overcompensation at the expense of the weaker.

Eventually they were cornered; Brendan almost ran smack dab into a wall, crushing Joy in his grip. He skidded to a halt and stared at the darkened, black wall in front of him, and swore and swore and swore.

The squeaking of thick rubber soles on linoleum slowed to a halt and there was a panicked, pained moment of thick silence that weighted on the soul. "Ozzz…" Brendan started.

"Get out of here," Ozzie said softly, his inferior, legally-blind-at-birth eyes straining to make out forms in the darkness.

"I-"

"Fucking go, Brendan!" Ozzie hissed, and Brendan heard the sudden onslaught of a lynching.

He took off to his right, keeping one arm up against the wall the entire time to guide himself. He came to an area in the corridors where the lights still flickered painfully, and there he found a tiny alcove. Brendan couldn't run anywhere, especially considering the fact that he didn't know where he was going. He crushed himself into the corner as far as he could go, baby Joy cradled fretfully in his arms.

He said a quick prayer to an otherwise dead god in thanks that baby Joy never made sound. Brendan took several deep breaths and tried to silence his pounding heartbeat a little, willing himself to stop sweating and shaking. They could smell fear. Literally.

He stared into Joy's frighteningly alert, jaded blue eyes to calm himself. She stared back serenely, her big eyes sunken in her sallow face, gurgling silently and flailing her little plastic doll arms lightly. Brendan started crying and tried to hold his breath.

There was a loud crash in the corridor and Brendan actually screamed, thinking Ozzie already dead, and crushed himself up in that corner a little more.

The two Ubers swung around the corner with upsetting precision, effectively blocking Brendan into the alcove. Stupid move on Brendan's part, really, but he could hardly be blamed solely for his current position.

"Cowering, little kludge? Ready to beg for your worthless little life, hmm?" One of them sneered arrogantly. If Brendan were in a better state of mind he would have been sick, but as it were:

"Yes…" He murmured weakly.

"Then beg!" The other one laughed and kicked him swiftly in the side. Brendan jerked, still crushing Joy to his chest, and curled slightly to the side.

"Pl-please, please, sirs…" He managed to choke out through sobs and panic.

"That's pitiful," The first Nietzschean sounded like he was discussing a mediocre play. "You can do better than that." With that, he reached forward lightning fast and snatched baby Joy from Brendan's arms.

"N-" Brendan managed to peep out before he was pinned back to the wall by the spurred arm of the other Nietzschean digging painfully into his throat.

"How 'bout now? Think you can do better now?" The first Nietzschean gave baby Joy a painful shake. Brendan convulsed violently.

"Please, sir, please!" He screeched unbearably, his voice breaking as fiercly as his heart. "Please, please don't, oh God, fuck, please, please, don't-" Kick. "Please! Please!" His voice heightened considerably, tearing through the air like a sonic jet. "I'm begging you, please, let us go!"

The first Nietzschean laughed again, a little lighter this time, and shook Joy again a little casually. "Maybe if you do a little favour for me." He glanced at his Uber comrade, who was still holding down the still convulsing Brendan. "Do you think the little kludge would like doing a little…service for me, Debreo?"

Brendan twitched more, close to vomiting, his voice whispering off on a nonstop mantra of "Please, god, no, please."

Debreo shrugged, his spurs digging into Brendan's skinny shoulder and drawing blood, without his notice. "Seems like the type."

The first Nietzschean chuckled again, shaking Joy casually. "Kludge, do what I want and I'll give you your little friend here." He patted the front of his pants lightly as he spoke. Brendan's breathing hitched and he looked up with his tear-stained face.

"Wh-wuh?"

"Don't act stupid." The Uber unzipped his fly sullenly and Debreo jerked Brendan forward, startling the young man, until he was in between the two Nietzscheans.

At any other time, like most times in the past, Brendan would have hesitated, objected, protested, whatever. Here he acted in a state of automatism, his breath hitching occasionally, tears still streaming down his face like a rushing waterfall, as he started with the familiar, degrading work before him.

It could be worse, he tried to console himself as he went through with it, choking, the Nietzschean arching back slightly, sighing contentedly. Carol went through much worse with Betas like this.

/Oh, God, Carol…/ Brendan sputtered a bit and almost didn't finish the job.

"Herrera, he's gorgeous like that," Debreo said softly, out of the blue, a moment later. Brendan choked for real and jerked back, spewing, Herrera finished and done with.

He fell to the ground, gagging, gasping, and puking, while Herrera chuckled, tucking himself back in and doing up his fly. "Yes. He is. Here, boy, you've earned your reward." He dangled Joy, upside-down, cruelly in front of Brendan. Brendan, startled, reached forward and fell again, his sobbing having started anew. "Go get it," Herrera suddenly flung Joy around, throwing her behind himself flippantly, where she hit the adjacent wall with a cruel thwack.

They were expecting Brendan to scream, at which point they could have more fun with him. But he didn't. He showed a remarkable feat of strength. In fact, the moment the sound of the breaking bones in that baby's body hit his ears, he shut right up. The tears stopped. His grimace faded. The anguished fire in his eyes died to be replaced with an angry freeze.

Something in him died. Most likely his soul.

Herrera and Debreo, as a matter of fact, were a little scared by this transition. Herrera's eyes widened the littlest bit and he took a step back from the disturbed kludge.

Brendan rose slowly, never blinking, his murderous eyes locked with Herrera's the entire time. His last tears crept ignored down his sallow, cracked face. Vomit, blood, and violation remained smeared across his chin, neck, and chest.

He opened his mouth softly, and sucked in the most terrifying breath Herrera had ever heard.

Then Brendan screamed. Howled. Wailed. Yelled. Bayed. Shrieked. If you could hear it, your heart would have broken into a million pieces.

But the Ubers didn't hear it. Ironically enough, the moment Brendan's breath pushed that shriek past his teeth, the sound of several shrillers filled the corridors.

**Scene Four **

The first thing that was done was the detaining of the Nietzscheans. After Seamus was propped up against the computer console, figuring his way around it, Beka dragged Goyashu and his lackey to one corner. It took her a hell of a while, but she did it. She didn't even bother asking Seamus over to help her. In the state he was in, he would've just gotten in the way.

She managed to drag them over to a load-bearing pole near the side of the room. She stood there for a while, staring, trying to find chains or something to bind them. Beka ended up taking the bonds from the surgical chair and trying to use those, but that didn't work out so well.

So she took her pistol and stunned them some more, and hoped they'd stay unconscious for longer.

They were only Betas, after all.

"I have a plan," Seamus said when she was done, and she leaned over his shoulder at the massive computer console. They saw Brendan and Ozzie running down darkened corridors over the monitors, the two Ubers playing like them like cats with mice. "I'll jack in and set off those Ubers, I can use their own security weapons against them. You go and get Ozzie and Brendan and get out of the building as fast as you can. Once you guys are out I'll seal all the outside doors so the radiation can't leak out. And I'll flood it in here so those bastards," He jerked his head backwards, where his tormentors lay subdued. "Can't get out ever again."

It was a little too fast for Beka. She ruffled her brow. "Jack in? Wha…" She turned his head to the side, to see the previously unnoticed newly implanted dataport, swollen around the sides, puffy, pussy, and bleeding just the littlest bit. "Jesus fuck! Shay, what the hell-"

"No no no, it's totally cool!" Seamus managed to give her a sly, cocky grin, even through all the swollen bruises. "Relax, relax. It hurt like hell, but I totally love it."

"Are you sure-"

"Don't touch it! Fuck!" He batted her hand away, lightly, not noticing how much they were bantering like siblings.

"Sorry," She retorted, smiling slightly.

"Here," Seamus continued, pointing up at the monitors. "Get out there, turn left, then right, then down a flight of stairs, and right again. I think."

"I'm not leaving you." Beka didn't move from where she was.

"What? Go!"

"How are you going to get out, Shay?" Beka moved to the side so she could see his face. He didn't look at her, typing away busily.

"I'll figure something out. Don't worry about me." When she still didn't move he looked up again. "Look, I mean it, I can take care of myself. Ozzie and Brendan can't. We have to help them. Go, please, Valentine?"

She rolled her eyes, gripped her pistol tighter, and headed out. Beka paused in the doorway. "Hey," She said. "You can call me Beka, you know."

He glanced up at her shyly. She could've sworn he was blushing, but it was so hard to tell, what with the bruises and all. "Okay, boss. Beka." He laughed a little, lightly.

Beka followed his directions down the darkened, flashing, klaxony corridors. Eventually she came across Ozzie, slumped over on the floor. She ran to him and knelt by his side.

"Jesus," she muttered as she rearranged his limbs around her.

"V-Valen…" He couldn't get it out very well. His throat was bruised right up, he had trouble breathing. His homemade spectacles were smashed, one of his eyes swollen shut and bloodied. It was very obvious he was essentially blind at the moment.

"Hold on," Beka said authoritatively. "We're gonna get you out of here. It'll be okay." She leaned down and slung one of his arms over her shoulders. For such a skinny guy, he was pretty freakin' heavy.

"But…Carol…" Ozzie managed to get out.

"I know," Beka said softly, trying not to think of the stitched up woman with the emaciated, raisin-like breasts. "It'll be okay, Ozzie. Come on."

She managed to limp down the halls, recalling from memory where she was supposed to go to get out.

Beka was startled and almost dropped Ozzie went the corridors were filled with the sound of shrillers.

-

He was in his element. Seamus couldn't stop grinning or laughing in the pseudo-environment, bathed in luminous blue and green. His body was healthy, healed, strong. He could see clearer than he ever had before in his life. There was no painful ringing in his ears, the buzz that usually came from fear, hunger, and the last beating.

Scrolling kanji whizzed by him, and with a flick of his hands he manipulated the chains to his will. He didn't see the monitors of the corridors, or hear the shrillers in the distance, but he knew they were there. He could feel it.

Seamus was omnipotent here. With a wave of one hand he built up entire empires of codes and information, and with the wave of the other he tore it all down again. He gave life to the AI matrix of the building, to the security system, the lighting, the heating, the ventilation, the alarms, even the plumbing. He gave life to an inanimate structure and he could take it all away again in the same breath.

He really was a freakin' genius!

Seamus laughed, his digital face clean, his digital hair shining. When he was satisfied that the shriller sounds had gone on long enough to subdue the Nietzscheans, he lit up a path for his comrades and opened a pathway for them, timing it to seal up after them so the good people of Boston were spared from poisoning.

-

Brendan yelled with the all the rage of three hundred years of oppression, of toil, labour, slavery and disease, poverty and starvation, all the frustration, anger, and helplessness exploded out of his corpse of a soul.

Herrera and Debreo didn't exactly fall to the ground, but they crumpled over satisfactorily, giving Brendan enough time to kick them each in the crotch and send them to the floor.

He started with Herrera, as was fitting. He throw himself forward and landed on the big Nietzschean's gut with a painful, soft thud, which would have hurt anyone. Without a moment' hesitation, in the same state of automatism in which he had performed his last act on this Nietzschean, he curled up his calloused, work-weary, scabby hand into a tight little steel fist and beat and beat and beat.

He broke Herrera's nose easily enough, and eventually it was shattered. Herrera struggled and Brendan shoved the palm of his left hand just underneath the Uber's adam's apple, crushing it painfully, while he struck his face.

After Herrera's nose was broken the cheekbones were easy to bruise and crush. The Nietzschean's face became distorted. Blood vessels in his eyes burst at alarming speeds and went red.

It was the most amazing feat of strength, or a Divine-given miracle, that the skinny little pacifist kludge could overpower the petro-chem Nietzschean guard so easily, but it happened. Eventually Herrera's face was nothing but a pile of mush and broken whiteness. Brendan didn't have time to try to bash the Uber's skull in, but if he had, he certainly would have done it.

Brendan stood and Debreo was cowering alongside Herrera, like the fucking lowly Beta he was. Brendan stood over him, glowering. At some point the shrillers had stopped and the lights flickered back on, and Debreo could clearly see the dead anger in the frozen eyes, and Brendan could clearly hear the sound of Debreo's rapidly beating heart.

Since Debreo hadn't been the real perpetuator of any crimes against Brendan, the skinny mudfoot was kinder to him. He kicked Debreo out and then stomped on his neck until he was sure it was broken.

Then he stepped back and leaned against the wall, staring blankly at where Joy lay. He didn't cry. And he didn't notice the huge gashes up and down his body where Herrera's bone spurs had wounded him.

Even if he did notice them, he wouldn't have cared.

-

It wasn't such an unbearable sound, Beka reflected, but she could see why the Nietzscheans would be vulnerable to it with their superior hearing. She cringed and cringed and helped Ozzie limp along the chosen pathway when the shrillers stopped and the lights came on full strength.

She stopped, standing still in the silence with Ozzie draped over her. A chill ran up her spine.

She turned the next corner and saw Brendan kicking in the throat of a Nietzschean. Another lay next to him, his face the most gruesome image Beka had ever seen.

Brendan didn't notice them as he turned and slumped against one wall. He bled freely up and down his sides. Beka worried a little that he would pass out.

She helped Ozzie walk over to them, pointedly avoiding the bodies, pointedly not looking at the dead baby in the corner, and set Ozzie down gently next to Brendan.

Then she looked at Brendan softly. "…Brendan?" She asked, a whisper.

He lifted his eyes up to meet hers. The front of his ragged shirt was an absolute mess. Beka didn't want to know what was in it. "I killed them," He said like he was discussing the weather.

"I know." She said softly.

"They…they got Joy. Carol, too, but…they really got Joy," It was like he was explaining a math equation.

"It's okay, Brendan," Beka felt a little uncomfortable saying that, as she knew very well it was not okay.

"So I killed them." He shrugged. "It didn't make me feel any better. Just made me…it made me like them."

"No, it didn't." Beka's voice had some strength and conviction now. It brooked no argument. "You're better than them. You always were. You're the only person I've met who deserves the title of 'man'." She didn't drop contact of his eyes.

Brendan remained where he was, just looking at her. Something changed in his eyes, but he didn't cry. They just became…softer.

"I'm sorry, Brendan." Beka said. She leaned forward and hugged him, unfazed by the mess that was now being smeared over her shirt and jacket. She hugged him tightly and he sighed and hugged her back, resting his overworked head on her shoulder.

"…thank you," He barely murmured after a moment.

They remained like that for a while. The lights started flickering, not immediately overhead of them, but around them. Seamus was telling them to go.

Brendan and Beka both helped Ozzie up, guiding him with one of his arms over their shoulders each. Lights lid the way ahead of them and flickered out once they crossed each distance. Doors sealed shut, forever, behind them.

**Scene Five **

They stood outside waiting for what seemed like an eternity. The rest of the workers and Nietzscheans had been evacuated. Most of the workers just went home, the job wasn't worth enough money to have any real opinions on losing. It just meant a few more sickly in the mines and a few more children in the sweatshops and brothels.

They lay Ozzie down on the ground and contemplated carrying him back to his little hole of a home, but Brendan wouldn't leave Seamus in there, and Beka wasn't about to argue with that.

There was a sort of general chaos around them. Many of the Nietzscheans were unaware of the nuclear threat, of course, so they squabbled amongst themselves.

Beka allowed herself to get worried. What the hell was wrong with that kid? When they got back to her ship she was giving him a good talking to-

Oooohkay. Pretty tangential train of thought, that.

"We were afraid you'd betrayed us. Abandoned us." Brendan said softly, never taking his eyes off the sealed up building.

Beka shifted uncomfortably. "I wouldn't do that. I don't do that to…friends."

Brendan nodded a little. "You will take care of Seamus?"

"What do you mean?"

"When you take him with you. You'll take care of him, right?" He looked down at her, his weary blue eyes puffy and reddened. "I'm not asking you to marry him if that's what you're worried about." It seemed like it should have been a joke but Brendan's voice was much too sad for that.

"Yeah…yeah, I know." Beka huddled into her jacket a little more. "I…I'll take him with me." She shrugged. "Sure," She tried to act nonchalant but it was a weird feeling inside her. She needed someone. She needed someone to be on the ship with her that wasn't going to fuck her over.

And he needed…a chance.

"He's a good kid," Brendan said, softly. He went through the old sell-Seamus routine, tiredly. "He's smart. Let him have some fun every now and then, just…look after him, okay?"

Beka looked up at Brendan. "I promise. I'll take care of him. And if anyone hurts him, I'll kill them."

Brendan managed a weak smile. "He'd do the same for you."

Beka couldn't think of anything to say as she stared into Brendan's eyes, which even in these most horrible of circumstances still captivated her.

Brendan's head suddenly jerked up as he turned to look back at the building, where a vent had opened on the side. Seamus scrambled out and dropped to the ground, then started running towards them.

"Finally! Seamus!" Beka was indignant, already feeling like loosing him would be too much. "What took you so long?"

"I was just makin' sure everything was sealed up and ready," Seamus called out, still running towards them. He grinned like an idiot. "I even set it up to seal up the vents on my way out. Am I perfect or what?"

"Why did you wait so long? What about the radiation?" Beka was still indignant.

"Oh, it's okay," Seamus said innocently enough. "I held my breath the whole time, there's no way it could get in."

Beka scrunched her eyes shut and told herself that the first thing she was going to do was give Seamus his shots.

As soon as Seamus actually got close enough to them, Brendan swooped down and snatched him up in an impressive bear hug. "Are you okay?" He whispered.

"Yeah…yeah, Bren. I'm fine."

Brendan didn't relinquish his hold. He turned Seamus' head to the side with a scowl. "Don't touch it!" Seamus yelped. "It's fine. It's great, I'm okay." Seamus looked up at his cousin and guardian. "I…I saw what happened, Bren."

Brendan closed his eyes and hugged Seamus close to him again, burying his face in the crook of the boy's shoulder and neck. "Forget about it," He said softly. "Forget about all of this. You're getting off of here. Valentine's taking you on your ship and…and you're going to have a real life, Shay. And you're going to come back and save us and make me proud. You're my little genius. So just forget all about it." He kissed Seamus' shorn, scabby head softly.

Seamus' cloudy blue eyes widened. "Really?" He said breathlessly. He pulled back and looked up at his cousin. "You mean it?"

"I mean it," Brendan said weakly.

Seamus looked at Beka. "He means it?" A cocky grin spread across his face.

"He means it!" Beka rolled her eyes and realized that, with Seamus on board, it was going to be one long lifetime.

-

"Ow! Mother fucker!" Seamus cried, and pulled his arm back as quickly as he could.

"Oh, quit your complaining," Beka admonished as she cleaned the needle and disposed of it.

"Why'd you even hafta do that? You said I was clean!"

"For now," Beka added. "It was just one little shot. You've got more of that coming to you where we're going." Seamus looked up at her, pouting a little. She actually laughed and rubbed the peach fuzz on his head. She had cleaned him up and dressed him in cut-down throwaways that Bobby had left on the ship. He looked as cute in them as a baby with a Mohawk. "Relax, Shay," She said. "It's not such a big deal. You'll thank me in a few years."

"Beka?" Seamus said in trepidation. "I have something to tell you."

"What?"

"Well, those discs that you were after. I kind of…swallowed them. Accidentally."

Beka smiled. "Any sort of time frame of when I can expect them back?"

Seamus blushed and screwed up his face. "I don't think you're going to get them back...I've eaten a lot of things that I shouldn't have that…never came back. Besides, I had a hard enough time getting them down." He looked exasperated.

Beka laughed. "Don't worry about it. In fact, I completely forgot about them. I'll just have to tell my Jaguar that we couldn't find them."

Seamus hung his head. "Are you sure you're not mad? I'd totally understand if you didn't want to take me anymore."

"It's no problem, Seamus, really. Forget about it."

"I mean it," He said softly. "You don't have to do this. I know I'm just a burden."

Beka looked at him softly, concerned. "Seamus…do you not want to come?"

"No, no! I do! More than anything! It's just…do you think I could have a few more days? Maybe a week? There's something I gotta finish first."

Beka looked at him awkwardly. "Okay…I'll tell you what. I'll go and tell my employer we couldn't find the chips and come back, and that should be enough time. Four days good enough?"

"Yes!" He smiled at her. "Are you sure….you'll come back, right?"

"I'm not going to leave you here, Seamus." Beka said, her voice firm. "I would never leave you like that."

"I believe you," He cut his tirade short. "One more favour?"

"What?"

"Could you…could you call me Harper? I had to hide that I was a Harper so they wouldn't find me and now…I don't know, after this I don't think I want to be called Seamus or Shay anymore."

Beka smiled. "Whatever you want, Harper."

**Curtain Call  
(musical interlude)**

Waking up with an ugly face  
Winston Churchill in drag  
Looking for a new maternal embrace  
Another tired old gag  
Am I just a walking bag of  
Chewed up dust and bones?  
Whoa.. this could be your lucky day in hell.  
-Eels "Your Lucky Day In Hell"

**Encore **

"I'm very, very sorry General Rawlins. But by the time we got there the entire factory was sealed up, tighter than a tomb." Beka did her best to smile and hide her anxiety at being in the diplomatic, dress dining room of a Nietzschean ship with several hundred Nietzschean ambassadors from treaty prides.

General Rawlins, an aging, tough old Nietzschean, sighed. "Well I suppose there's nothing you could do about that. You do realize you won't be getting the second half of your pay?"

Beka smiled. "That's not an issue. I think both of us can just be glad that the Drago-Katzov no longer have those weapons."

Rawlins' eyes narrowed. "Yes. I guess you could say that." He straightened himself up. "Well, Ms. Valentine, I do hope I can keep in contact with you for any other operations I may need executed?"

Beka shivered slightly. "Tell you what. I'll let you know as soon as my schedule opens up."

-

When Beka went back to Earth four days later, she found Harper waiting for her, his dataport healed and clean, giving her the sunniest, most overconfident smile she had ever seen.

Behind him, a new well pumped clean water and the children danced in it.

Brendan and Ozzie sat on the side, watching, mourning together. Brendan smiled at Beka weakly, but still genuinely. His eyes lingered on Harper for a moment and his smile grew. He was proud of his little cousin.

Beka suppressed a proud beam and straightened her jacket toughly. "Well, Harper, now that you've proved yourself adept at running water, I expect you'll be able to fix the controls on my shower like you promised?"

If it were possible, Harper smiled wider. "Whatever you want, Boss."

**The End.**


End file.
